


That's A Motif

by cloudscover



Category: TWICE (Band)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Guess the cameos if you dare, Ray and Xuxi are the best boys, There are puppies in it so surely that makes the angst worth it, idk what I'm doing honestly
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-22
Updated: 2019-07-19
Packaged: 2019-08-05 22:10:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 28,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16375916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cloudscover/pseuds/cloudscover
Summary: Chaeyoung and Momo are ghosts and it’s a long way to any kind of peace.





	1. Shapes

“Wind in my face. Don’t stop now when it feels so great. You could run ‘til you slip on a sidewalk and the same bone that you pick gon’ break. _That’s a motif_.” – Wings | Mac Miller

**Chaeyoung | October 26, 2018**

Triangle points.

That is how they were scattered across the tensely bubbled room. They were like points of a triangle. Points one, two, three – although not a very good triangle because one point was not as firm as the other two.

Point one consisted of grief disguised as anger. Point two consisted of frustration laced exasperation. Point three consisted of thinly coated nonchalance but it was really just defeat.

The top of the triangle consisted of an agitated Nayeon. Swaddled up in white sheets and slightly propped up, she looked small but the emotions that flared from her were anything but that – anything but muted.

Two perked front teeth met her bottom lip in a vain effort to keep venom covered comments to herself. The comments were not for her company’s ears, it was not for her to hear. It was not to her but at the _her_ that was hiding behind the younger girl – the one that was not present but still here.

Lightly bruised knuckles displayed white as lazily cleaned nails met the palm of both of her hands. Eyes glared hazily at the figure across from her with pain edging along the corners of them.

The second point of the triangle entailed an unimpressed Tzuyu. Standing in a posture that has been reduced to almost a slouch – a far cry from how she used to stand – with emotions burning from her that could burn but it was more bark than bite.

Her cheeks were puffed slightly, filled with hot air let out in an exasperated huff. Hands found purchase in the air as her arms were thrown up unceremoniously so in frustration.

She spoke curtly towards the one person she never thought she could lose genuine patience for, “unnie, can you please pull your head out of your ass for a second?”

Nayeon narrowed her eyes at the sentence, completely ignoring the edges of disappointment in the other woman’s tone. Biting around a scoff she replied, “ **you** pull your head out of **your** ass Tzuyu. I don’t care where she goes nor what she’s doing. I don’t want to see her, I don’t want to hear her, and I don’t even want to hear her name being spoken.”

She sunk a little further into her mattress, almost entirely sinking into it. A sad mutter could be heard from the pile of sheets that consisted of her current existence, “I don’t even want to recall that she exists. Not after,” and she stopped to swallow because she hated thinking about it. She hated knowing about it too. She hated seeing it more.

“Not after what she did to us. Not after what did to me nor to herself. And **certainly** not after what she did to her.”

Like seasonal leaves, the words were left in the air but Tzuyu grasped onto every single one that moved past. “You can say both of their names you know,” Tzuyu said in a sad and desperate tone. “And you can’t blame her for that either,” she finished, talking over a petulant I don’t want to in the process.

“I can, I will and I **know** for a fact that Dahyun thinks that same thing. There is no one else to blame but her Tzuyu,” she replied in a manner quieter than anything she’s said in the last ten minutes of arguing with her friend.

Tzuyu gaped at that. At the knowledge that Dahyun thought the same of an unnie that the other girl always considered to be her favorite. Clearing her throat from a lot of words that she wanted to say but couldn’t – wouldn’t – she settled for a pathetically watered sounding, “but she’s your sister. Jeongyeon unnie’s your sister.”

Nayeon sucked in a breath at the name before jutting her hand to her side to press her mattress down all the way. She let her back fall flat against the mattress before struggling, painfully so, to turn on her side – waving Tzuyu off when she heard her shoes scuffling towards her.

“As of September 22, 2018, she is not my sister,” Nayeon finally replied, her tone vacant of any emotion. “She’s not anything to me at all.”

Tzuyu shuffled towards her again, “unnie-”

“Tzuyu-ah… I’ll see you later,” Nayeon interrupted, tossing her blanket over her head and ending the conversation.

Tzuyu whimpered a bit and sniffled once before she walked towards the door. She stood in front of it, with her hand on the knob and her eyes gazing at the space that occupied point three. Under her breath she murmured, “I love you unnie and take care” before departing the room.

The third point of the triangle contained a quiet Chaeyoung. She lost her voice a long time ago and it pained her. She watched her best friend argue with her eldest sister about her older sister and it pained her. She couldn’t say a word about it edgewise.

She met eyes with an unseeing Tzuyu as she left before she got up from her position on the floor where her back rested against the wall. She walked towards Nayeon where the sounds of tiny sobs could be heard more prominently.

She hovered her hand over the older woman, not to touch but just so her presence could be felt. She watched as Nayeon shivered a bit before she moved her mouth centimeters from her sister’s ear. _I love you_ , she spoke out. _It’s alright_ , she said as the crying got louder.

A painful sob intertwined with a “Chaeyoung-ah, I miss you so much.” And Chaeyoung could only answer the same, sad smile in place. _I miss you too unnie. All the time._

Points one, two, three – Nayeon, Tzuyu, and Chaeyoung – except, nobody knew that Chaeyoung was there. That Chaeyoung was always there.

\---0---

She’s been doing this for weeks now and she still wasn’t used to it – it’s not like she ever questioned what was going on with her anyway. It was just weird to be able to exist outside of herself. It was weird to be able to be around people without an issue. It was weird to be able to listen in on any conversation that she wanted to and no one would know.

Right now, was different. Right now, was pain.

She felt like she should not be here at this particular moment. That she should not be here and listening to Jeongyeon cry her heart out into Tzuyu’s shoulder. It was abrupt how it started. How she walked a few blocks before she just disappeared into thin air and wound up in her recently discharged sister’s room.

It was tiring enough, so she sat on one of Jeongyeon’s unnecessarily bright bean bag chairs in the corner of the room while said woman sobbed and whimpered in their mutual friend’s arms – Tzuyu trying her damnedest to hold the woman together while being mindful of the sling that comes with her.

She should not be here.

But she was anyhow.

“I didn’t- I didn’t think that she could hate me so much Tzuyu-ah.” The sentence was said intermingled with sobs so painful, what she heard in the hospital from Nayeon paled in comparison.

Tzuyu wanted to say that Nayeon didn’t hate her, but she wasn’t sure if that was true. A lot of things changed in the last few weeks and that was one of them. There was simply too much pain for her to see otherwise.

Jeongyeon’s breath hitched and it interrupted her thoughts.

“And it’s all my fault too,” she said in words almost entirely drowned out by Tzuyu’s sweater.

_It’s not._

Tzuyu raised her head to the ceiling to blink back her tears. The day was exhausting and it was only noon. Honestly, every day was exhausting. It didn’t matter what she was doing, really.

In the most delicate, feather soft tone that she could use, Tzuyu responded with “it’s not. It is not your fault.”

 _See, told you_.

Both Tzuyu and Chaeyoung were startled by the hand that connected with the former’s shoulder to push her back – both heads snapping to attention to the blonde girl standing in front of her incredulously.

“How- how can you say that,” was said to Tzuyu in pure disbelief.

“Jeong-”

“No, Tzuyu. How can you say that? How can you say that it’s not my fault? Because it is. I’m the reason that Nayeon is going to be in the hospital for much, much longer than a month. And she might not be able to walk out on her own when she does finally leave and that is my fault,” she began to rant. She started wiping harshly with her right hand at the tears and its tracks on her face as she continued.

“I- I’m the reason that Chae-” and she stopped because she couldn’t say it. It made it real if she did – reality became different when said out loud.

She swiped harder at her face, hissing lowly when her nails connected with the scar that was now attached to her. Tzuyu surged forward at the noise of pain, grappling the older woman’s hand in her own. She backed them up until they were both sitting on the bed in the middle of the room. She muttered out a faint “stop that” as she checked her friend’s face to make sure she didn’t dislodge any of the stitches.

“I-” Jeongyeon started as distressed eyes locked onto the ones to her left. “I blame myself. There’s no one else for me to blame. I blame myself. And- and Nayeon blames me too. Dahyun, and she thinks she’s being subtle, blames me as well. I’m sure my family does too. But, but why won’t you Tzuyu?”

The younger woman relocated the hand that rested on Jeongyeon’s cheek to the woman’s hair, patting lightly in the process. “Because unnie… why would I? The only person who should be blamed is the truck driver who was on the wrong side of the road.”

_Or_

“And if Chae was here, she’d also blame the city for not fixing the barricades on the road like they were supposed to have done months ago,” Tzuyu chuckled at that, the sound watery to both – all three’s – ears.

Chaeyoung couldn’t help but raise a fist in the air, smirk fixed in place at the comment.

The younger woman lightly traced the scar that held a home on the side of Jeongyeon’s head before finishing in that same watery tone, “I would never blame you for trying to keep your sisters safe. I would never blame you for trying to avoid running head long into a truck much bigger than your own. And I wish-” Tzuyu stopped to swallow back the beginnings of a sob.

“I wish it worked out better than it did in so many ways. God, I wish that it did. But, I don’t blame you for it because there was only a second alternative that could have been much worse,” and she paused to make eye contact with the woman next to her.

“I could be mourning for three friends instead of just one.”

The two sat in silence after that statement for a while. Tzuyu removed her hand from Jeongyeon’s hair and skootched back a bit to watch the older woman.

Jeongyeon, for her part, dried her eyes – albeit it being useless as she was still crying but not as much as before. She than began to rub at her temple – finding it extremely annoying that her left arm was restricted so she couldn’t rub that side either.

Tzuyu kissed her temple and stood up when she noticed both that and the fact that she had class in an hour.

“Get some rest unnie. That’s too much stress on your head,” she said. Jeongyeon nodded and fell back onto her bed in response, lightly grunting at the bit of pain that rattled in her head.

“I’ll bring up a bottle of water and your pills before I leave,” Tzuyu said in voice that was surrounded by exhaustion.

“Okay. I love you kid, study hard,” Jeongyeon said as she sluggishly moved into a more comfortable position and attempting to kick off her shoes on the way.

Tzuyu gave her a soft smile that was missed and then rolled her eyes at the lazy manner in which she tried to remove her shoes. She threw an “I love you too unnie” over her shoulder as she left the room.

The sound of her breath hitching at the sign that indicated Chaeyoung’s room – which was across from Jeongyeon’s – was lost to the woman on the bed but not on the one that hopped up from the bean bag chair with difficulty.

Chaeyoung bumbled over to where her sister laid – sans one shoe – on her bed.

She laid on the space next to Jeongyeon once the other woman finally laid still. Her eyes were on her sister’s face, eyeing every inch of the skin in front of her. She took note of a pair of very sad and red stained eyes to pouty chapped lips to a jagged scar that started at the top of her forehead, running past her left eye and landing in the middle of her cheek.

“Chaeyoung-ah,” Jeongyeon said in a pleading voice. Chaeyoung was a bit more than spooked because Jeongyeon was – unknowingly to her – making eye contact with her as she said her name.

 _Yes_.

The older woman took a deep breath and closed her eyes before saying something into the air that she hoped would carry to her baby sister. “What do you call a Mexican in the 1970s?”

Chaeyoung just looked at the face in front of her with a smile that held so much – pain, adoration, amusement, and sadness. _I don’t know, what do you call them?_

“A Hispanic! At the Disco,” Jeongyeon finished. She chuckled for a little moment before the small bout of laughter gave way to sobs.

Chaeyoung met her with an unheard chuckle before she started shuffling around at the sound of the sobbing. She shoved herself as close as she could to her older sister without touching her – but fitting herself into a position reminiscent of how they used to lay around.

“I’m sorry. Chaeyoung, I’m so, so sorry,” Jeongyeon whispered out amid broken sobs.

_It’s alright. There’s nothing to apologize for. Please know that it was not your fault._

And she stayed there curled into her older sister, whispering reassurances and an _I love you_ that would never be heard, until Jeongyeon cried herself to sleep.

\---0---

She found her place at the entrance of a university that she only got to attend for a month. She was trying to decide if she wanted to spend the rest of the day sitting through Tzuyu’s various literature lectures or Dahyun’s World Studies one.

Both sounded unbelievably boring.

Her attention was taken away by someone who deliberately avoided walking into her – or rather through her. Most people moved between her, not sensing her presence. Occasionally, she came across one who oddly moved around where she stood and often looked back in interest at the same spot.

It was interesting every time. It was even more interesting when a voice suddenly addressed her in a voice marked by both curiosity and boredom – in a way that only said owner could probably pull off.

“How long have you been dead?”

She jerked her towards the direction of the voice with a surprised look plastered on her face. Her eyes focused on the owner – a woman who stood a couple of inches taller than her with the nicest jawline she’s ever seen.

She wondered how the woman was talking to her but she understood when she noticed that the woman stood out more prominently against the dull background of the people that surrounded them.

One, two, three. She blinked once, twice and a third time before she found her voice to answer.

“Are you- are you supposed to ask that?”

The other woman kicked her bare feet against the sidewalk in a blasé manner. She shoved a hand into her sweatpants’ pocket as she shrugged uncaringly.

Chaeyoung sighed softly before she answered the question, “for about four weeks. How long for you?”

The decidedly pretty woman pushed her circular glasses that were perched on her nose up with her index finger as she answered with a soft along the corners tone – but it was otherwise dismissive, “four months.”

The newly met duo stared at each other for a moment.

Mirth danced behind the taller woman’s eyes in a choreography always known to her but not only belonging to her as she watched Chaeyoung gape at her in wonderment. It couldn’t be helped as it was her first time meeting someone like her.

She cleared her throat before moving through a stutter, “I’m- I’m Chaeyoung.”

The other woman raised an eyebrow before a small but kind smile encompassed her face, “they call me Momo.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, I have no idea what possessed me to write this sad shit but we're in for a long ride. Thanks for reading. You can find this on AFF of the same title and you can find me on twitter @sunsetmina Oh and each chapter goes back and forth between Chaeyoung and Momo - not necessarily from the same day and sometimes they'll share a day.


	2. Of Fate

“Cause I’m just one of those ghosts traveling endlessly. Don’t need no roads. In fact, they follow me. _And_ _we just go in circles_.” – Misguided Ghosts | Paramore

**Momo | October 26, 2018**

The opposite of a triangle is a circle. Smooth around the edges because it has none. Endless. They roll and they scroll and they never stop. Triangles are hard. Circles are easy. Emotions are neither – but none of them know that.

There’s no center to a circle unless you draw it and that is what Momo was for them. That is what she is. The center to the lives of the people she left behind. And they’ve made due.

Or at least they’ve pretended to.

Momo’s been doing this for months now and she still wasn’t entirely used to it, but she adapts all the same. And she has a mild sort of fun as she does.

The room was spiraling – less out of control and more out of monotony. The bored woman was utilizing a small pocket of energy to propel the chair that she was sitting in around a couple of times.

It was the best part about being a spirit (or a ghost or whatever she was), being able to manipulate things as if she still existed as a physical being.

She was biding her time before her sister woke up for her noon class. Although, it was currently eleven-fifty.

“You’re going to be late,” Momo couldn’t help but sing song out loud.

She considered using some of her energy to lob something at the lump lightly snoring on the bed but in any case, it wouldn’t have been very inconspicuous. Plus the alarm from her phone had been going off for the last hour and surely she would hear it soon.

(She didn’t really believe her own thought).

She started looking around for something to throw but the plan drifted away with the wind due to the presence of a welcomed intruder.

The bedroom door was pushed open – harshly so – and stood at the door was one of Momo’s favorite morning sights.

Mina was there with her glasses perched crookedly on the bridge of her nose and her very ruffled attire.

Her sleep shirt was half tucked in, half untucked from her haste of rising to shut off Sana’s alarm. A pair of bright blue cotton shorts with cartoon penguins on it accompanied the pastel pink top. And at some point, the other woman lost one of her socks in her sleep.

The obviously peeved woman was flanked on either side by a tiny shar pei and a much tinier long haired daschund. Both puppies tripped over one another in their haste to follow Mina as she marched over to where Sana was resting,

She hissed Sana’s name in an airborne whisper as she turned off the incessant beeping from said girl’s phone. The sleeping woman did not, at any point, stir at the harsh tone that surrounded her called name.

Once the sound of the alarm ceased to exist, Mina sighed in the silence. Then her face softened when she noticed the bags under the sleeping woman’s eyes.

It softened even more so when she remembered just how hard it had been for Sana to sleep the past few months – or sleep and stay asleep.

She recalled hearing Sana stomping around their apartment around three in the morning – one, because the girl lacks all grace when she’s tired and two, because the dog that slept on Mina’s bed, barked a singular time when a body passed by the door.

She considered just letting the tired woman sleep in longer but she knew missing classes bothered the woman more than she would ever admit.

Instead, Mina laid her body over Sana’s sleeping form, her head connecting with the woman’s covered stomach. She made herself deadweight as she whispered for Sana to “wake up.” She poked her side a couple of times for good measure.

Sana pulled herself awake at the intrusion and panicked for a moment at the feeling of something resting on her stomach. However, she settled once the smell of muted spearmint met her senses.

“Mina,” she spoke with a yawn following the name out.

She stretched for a moment, arching her back off of the mattress and allowing her stomach to carry Mina slightly up as she did so. The smaller woman giggling adorably at the movement.

Mina pushed her glasses upwards a little before she laid her head back down on her sister’s stomach. “Sana, you’re late for class,” she stated, the words more than mumbled and jumbled against the older woman.

Sana understood it anyhow. She always did.

She absentmindedly asked what time it was as she searched her bed for her discarded phone while the other hand took purchase in Mina’s hair. Mina handed Sana her phone that the other had yet to find as it was still in her hand.

The time read 12:08pm.

Sana dropped her mouth open in a groan, a “shit, I’m late” escaping her lips.

Mina, accompanied by a mischievous smile and a laugh, spoke an “I told you so” against her torso.

Sana puffed out her cheeks in slight annoyance before exhaling aggressively. “Whatever. I’ll e-mail him later,” she started while moving her other hand to burry itself in Mina’s light brown hair. “What time do you have to be in at the academy?”

Mina answered her around a contented sigh, “I’m off today. Forced vacation time.”

Sana chuckled at that, tugging fondly at a strand of hair. She looked down at her sister for a moment before adding her own thoughts on the topic at hand: “good, you work far too much.”

Giving her a noncommittal shrug, Mina remarked that it was “a good distraction” and Sana understood that entirely.

Sana pulled her hands away from Mina’s hair before pulling the younger woman up for a hug – Mina giggling at the incessant tugs all the while. She cradled her sister’s head with the entirety of her arms while Mina locked her own as best as she could around her neck.

“I love you a lot you know,” she remarked, snuggling into her sister’s neck. “I love you too.”

After lying around for a few minutes in complete silence – (with Momo staring longingly at them) – Mina eventually rolled off of Sana and the bed.

She stepped around the puppy that was immediately at her feet waiting for all the attention in the world to be given to him. She made sure to rub Xuxi behind his ears before switching to give the same affection to Ray.

“Go get ready for your two o’clock and I’ll make lunch,” Mina said as she opened the door wider for the dogs to scamper out – one considered it, while the other walked out.

“Sounds good. Oh hey, Jihyo and I are going to grab dinner around six, do you want to join us,” Sana asked. She rested her head on her hand as she gazed at Mina.

“No, that’s okay. Go have a date night. You two haven’t had one in a while,” Mina said, toeing at Ray as the long haired Dachshund pounced at her feet.

“Are you sure?”

“Positive,” she responded. She was now trying to fend two puppies away from her feet as Xuxi came back into the room. “Good god, leave my feet alone. Sana get your son,” she chuckled out as she shook a foot above the Shar Pei currently nipping at it.

“ **Your** son started it,” Sana chuckled as she moved the covers off of her and sunk down to the floor – Xuxi immediately walked over to crawl into her lap.

“Fair, but Ray is tiny and couldn’t reach my foot once it was put up,” Mina said as she sat her foot back on the ground. The tinier puppy giving up once her foot was still. “Unbelievable. I put my foot down and suddenly he doesn’t care.”

Sana chuckled at the unimpressed look on her sister’s face and the dog rolling around contentedly on the floor. “On the scale from 1 to 10, how annoyed do you think Momo would be to know that we own dogs now?”

Momo grumbled at the question, not finding it humorous in the slightest.

“The scaled would be broken,” Mina laughed out as a sad smile slowly graced her features. “I’ll go make lunch,” she said when the feeling of a sad atmosphere began to edge into the room.

“Okay,” Sana said simply, understanding entirely – especially with the recess of her earlier _dream_ infiltrating her thoughts.

\---0---

She found her place at the entrance of the town’s university, having followed behind the second oldest for a while as she made her way to her social psychology lecture.

Momo, however, got distracted by a barefooted woman that stood a few paces from her.

She noticed the fact that the shorter woman stood out as opposed to the people around the two of them. (And it had nothing to do with her choice in orange hair dye).

She decided to introduce herself to the first spectral being that she’s seen since her first week as one herself.

“How long have you been dead?”

She watched as the other woman jerked her head in her direction with an astonished look painted on her particularly pretty face. Her eyes focused on the woman with the feline eyes and the attractive mole at the left corner of her mouth.

She continued to watch as the smaller woman blinked at her once, twice and a third time before she found her voice to give her an answer.

“Are you- are you supposed to ask that?”

Momo kicked a bare foot against the sidewalk, encompassing the air of nonchalance. She shoved a hand into her pockets as she shrugged.

The other woman gave out a reluctant sigh as she answered Momo’s admittedly inappropriate question, “for about four weeks. How long for you?”

Momo pushed her glasses up as they made their presence known by simply sliding forward from a hard swing of her leg as she answered with a rather contemptuous, “four months.”

The newly met duo stared at each other for a moment.

She looked on in slight amusement as the other woman gaped at her in what she presumed was stupefaction. She took in the sight of the woman in her crop top tube top and dress pants – she was wearing white and it was (hopefully) not done ironically.

The woman must have been going somewhere fancy in nature before she died as opposed to Momo who was in a pair of black sweatpants and a plain white tee – the outfit that she last fell asleep in.

Tiny, pretty lady stuttered through an introduction and Momo thought she was cute.

“I’m- I’m Chaeyoung.”

She raised an eyebrow in acknowledgement before giving her a small smile, “they call me Momo.”

\---0---

Momo was always much better at actions than she was at words – far more kinetic than she is passive. But perhaps she should have said something to Chaeyoung before she teleported them both to the roof of the biology building.

She looked at the woman with amusement edging along her features as said woman slightly freaked out in a winded tirade.

“Can you at the very least warn me the next time you decide to uproot me from the ground onto the top of a building? That was scary without warning,” she wheezed out.

Momo tilted her head to the sky to stifle the laughter that bubbled within her chest.

She focused her attention back on the woman as said woman shuttled around the area of the roof. She eyed her for a moment before meandering her way towards the green house.

(It was her favorite place and she sends a small thanks towards Jihyo for telling her about the environmental club’s project).

She made her way to the bench residing in the middle of the house – a spot that she made her home away from home both when she was alive and after the fact.

After wandering around for a moment, Chaeyoung joined her on the bench.

Momo noticed the glimmer in her eyes as she took in the various flowers and greenery surrounding them. “This… it is very pretty here. How did you find this place?”

“My sister’s girlfriend told me about it last year. I’ve spent a lot of time here since,” Momo answered, still staring at the flowers in front of her.

“I figured you could use a peaceful place since there’s obviously something bothering you with you being a,” she waves her hands in her direction, “lingering spirit and all.”

“You seem to know a lot about our current existence,” Chaeyoung remarked with Momo nodding in agreement. “Any tips for the newbie?”

Momo thought about it for a second before smiling slightly, “I do in fact have a guide for the misguided.” She smiled as Chaeyoung laughed almost silently. Then she turned towards the younger woman with a look that was an odd mixture of seriousness and playfulness.

_Tip Number 1: sleep._

“Sleep? We can sleep,” Chaeyoung asked incredulously.

Momo blinked at her once before answering, “I mean, yeah. Do you ever get tired when you transport through walls or over lengthy distances?” Chaeyoung nodded in lieu of a verbal reply.

“Ghosts utilize energy much like a living being. You get tired, you sleep. You get too tired, you pass out. I learned that the hard way – I’ll tell you about that later. So, tip one is: sleep.”

_Tip Number 2: practice._

“Practice using your energy so you don’t get tired as fast. The more you practice, the more you can do things like-” and Momo showed her an example by picking up a potted plant and moving it to the opposite side of the table “-that.”

Chaeyoung looked on in wonder with a question rising behind her eyes. Momo had a bit of an idea of what the curious woman wanted to ask, so she continued on before she could.

_Tip Number 3: don’t show yourself._

Chaeyoung looked at her with a soft gaze and spoke, “you knew what I was going to ask didn’t you?”

“I did. As much as I would love to tell you otherwise, it does more harm than good. Tried it during my second week floating around and I ended up scarring my youngest sister to the point where she has occasional nightmares about it,” Momo started.

She lightly tapped the soles of her feet along the ground before she continued: “I have no idea what happened when I showed up. But, I understood that it interrupted her process of grieving. So showing yourself, is a bad idea.”

They sat in silence for a beat before Chaeyoung interrupted with her own anecdote: “I have sisters myself, both older than me.”

Momo connected her eyes to the side of Chaeyoung’s head before asking her, “What are your sisters’ name?”

Chaeyoung hummed for a moment before she actually answered: “Nayeon is the eldest, and she studies here actually. She’s a fourth year going for her doctorate in psychology. She’s currently having an off year, considering everything.

The second is Jeongyeon. She was a third year education major and wanted to teach kindergarten but she dropped out after the whole-” she waved her hands in the air to indicate what she wanted to say. “-me dying thing,” she finished with a frown marring her face.

Momo shared a little about her own family, hoping to distract the younger woman from any bad emotions.

“I have two little sisters. The youngest one and I are both adopted actually. I knew her before we found a home. She used to trail after me at the orphanage because, according to four year old her, I was very nice since I gave her my cookies a few times. She doesn’t know that I did that only because I hated oatmeal raisin,” Momo said. She chuckled at the memory of a tinier than ever Mina with a mouth covered in crumbs waddling behind her.

“Her name’s Mina, she was the one I mentioned about having the occasional nightmares. She and I worked at a dance academy together instead of going to university. She and I kind of loathed school, but dance was something that we both loved. Sana on the other hand thrived in any school setting. She also goes here and she’s a third year working for her doctorate in psychology much like your eldest sister,” Momo finished.

Chaeyoung looked at her astonished at the last bit of information, “small world huh.”

Momo once again turned her attention towards the flowers and nodded as she did so, “yeah.”


	3. Cry for Me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slight trigger warning towards the end of this chapter for a suicide attempt. If you skip over the section that I highlight and need me to explain what happened let me know.

“Don’t need nobody, we bouncing on that Astral Plane. Hold up, hold up, I think I just forgot my name. ( _That’s ‘cause you’re dead_ ).” – Dead Man’s Tetris | Flying Lotus feat. Captain Murphy and Snoop Dogg

**Chaeyoung and Momo | November 1, 2018**

There was something disconcerting about watching yourself resting in a casket. It was in the sense that you’re existing and not at all physically yet in every way spiritually.

Chaeyoung thought that if she focused hard enough, she could feel everything that was missing. As if she could associate herself with the body abandoned.

It felt suffocating. Yet, it was better than feeling the nothing that she had been when looking at herself in an open casket.

The last time she looked at her physical self was in the morgue that ghost her had woken up in. It was some hours after she died then. Gone were the contusions and nicks that covered the length of her body. Gone was the obvious dislocation of bones that were never supposed to set how they did.

She looked clean of all previous flaws and grooves. She looked put together, not like a puzzle but like a game of Tetris where the pieces don’t fit exactly. There was something missing. She was missing. She looked dead and not like someone sleeping.  

Her train of thought was interrupted by a hand crossing into her vision. One of the funeral directors had come over to close the casket to wheel it out for burial.

Her eyes followed after her departing somatic self until she and the director were out of sight. She took a breath that she didn’t need and stayed rooted in her spot. She felt disconnected for the first time since she died.

“I don’t like this,” she spoke out. She turned for a moment to face the woman sitting in a pew behind her, “I hate this unnie.”  

Momo stood up and walked towards her, quietly so. The older woman ended up behind her as Chaeyoung turned around to face where her casket originally stood. Momo placed both hands on either shoulders and gave her a comforting squeeze before moving to stand next to her.

Momo gave her her standard shrug before muttering a simple, “it sucks.”

Chaeyoung cut her eyes to the woman beside her. She gave her a small mocking smile before speaking, “you’re real bad at words sometimes.”

Momo turned her head to wink at her before responding, “that’s a fair statement. However, simplicity fits best for emotions that are not.” Momo poked her in the side before going, “how’s that for bad at words?”

Chaeyoung only chuckled as she squirmed away from intrusive fingers.

The two settled in silence for a moment before Momo interrupted it with a question, “do you want to watch the burial or go elsewhere?”

“Elsewhere please,” she answered. Momo looped an arm around Chaeyoung’s shoulders before steering them out of the front of the church.

\---0---

Chaeyoung strolled around the city with Momo for a few hours before the duo inevitably went their separate ways for the day. It was a rhythm the duo had adapted within the last week, of exploring the city and then going off to their respective families.

Today, Chaeyoung found herself back in the hospital – which really was not new – but this time she was sitting in the middle of one of the physical therapy offices.

She was watching Jeongyeon have her first session and doing a simple round of shoulder circles. Among a cracked elbow and a shattered wrist, her shoulder was the only portion of her left arm that wasn’t afflicted by any form of muscle distension.

As she was rolling her shoulders, a single _Happy Birthday_ streamer courtesy of one Chou Tzuyu could be seen dangling from her sling.

Chaeyoung tuned out the conversation being held by Jeongyeon and her therapist – although she did hear that there was good news in regards to the woman’s wrist. She took the time to get lost in her head a little.

She had felt rather off since her funeral earlier. She kind of wished that she had listened to Momo when the other woman said that it was a bad idea to go – because it was.

She had felt tired and slightly disoriented since then. It had left her wondering if ghosts could get sick.

Then again, it probably didn’t help that she hadn’t slept since she learned that she could. Yet it was because she didn’t understand how that worked.

In fact, there were a lot of things that she did not understand about her new existence. That being one and the other being why did she exist in the manner that she did.

Momo had told her – in the most theatrical way imaginable – that any spirits roaming around, typically stayed around to see the completion of their unfinished business in a very movie clichéd format.

With that knowledge, she wondered what Momo’s unfinished business was because the other woman had no idea herself. She couldn’t remember the details of her death – much like Chaeyoung couldn’t remember her own – and neither of her sisters talked about it.

The only thing she had recalled from her own death was that it had happened in the living room of her and her sisters’ apartment after she woken up from a nap. She came to that conclusion because it had physically hurt her to be in that room for a while. Other than that, no idea.

Chaeyoung didn’t know what her own business could be. She had left no promises or obligations incomplete and on top of that, she knows that she died in a car accident and of most of the circumstances that led to it.

She pulled herself out of her head when she noticed that she was the only person left in the room. With that and a snap of her fingers, she was teleported to Nayeon’s room.

\---0--- 

If Chaeyoung were to describe the scene in front of her, the best word to assign to it would be soundless. Zero sound came from the occupants of the room other than bursts of harsh breathing.

An irate Nayeon sat up in her bed accompanied by shaky, clinched fists. She was staring daggers at the two people that stood at the foot of her bed with distraught looks washing over their features. Her eyes often shifted placement between the two.

Jeongyeon and Tzuyu looked at her with looks that were exceedingly apologetic while she met them with a betrayed stare.

Dahyun sat in the chair that resided next to Nayeon’s bed with her eyes trained on her own fidgeting hands. Other than a single glare from Nayeon that reduced her to looking at her hands, she was mostly exempt from the other woman’s wrath.

“So,” the eldest occupant of the room began. Her tenor was sharp and dangerous – so much so that even Chaeyoung flinched at the tone. “You buried my baby sister today and not a single person in this room told me about it until after it happened?”

Chaeyoung could only gape at the physical occupants of the room. This was the one time where she didn’t think that Nayeon’s anger was entirely misplaced.

Jeongyeon shifted on her feet for a moment, a foot absentmindedly kicking out as she refused to meet eyes with her sister. She answered regardless in a volume that was almost entirely muted, “it wasn’t like that Yeon. It really wasn’t.”

Nayeon’s eyes ended its restless back and forth and settled on Jeongyeon’s form. With ever hardening eyes and a tone wrapped in anger and desperation, she spoke: “No? Then what the hell was it like Jeongyeon?”

Jeongyeon only ducked her head down in response while Dahyun pulled her own up to answer.

“Unnie, your parents didn’t want you to know. They thought that it wouldn’t be a good idea for you to know because um,” and Dahyun let the sentence end where it did.

She looked towards Tzuyu to finish the statement because she didn’t want to be responsible for the anguish that would come after it was said.

Tzuyu ran a distressed hand through her hair before resigning herself to finishing the admittedly incredibly inconsiderate explanation.

“They didn’t want you to know because your legs don’t work unnie,” and Tzuyu tried everything within her power to make that sentence come off as softly as possible.

“You can’t walk and you can hardly sit up for longer than twenty minutes at a time. You would have burdened yourself with trying to exceed your capabilities just to attend Chae’s funeral,” Tzuyu finished in the same soft tone that she started with.

Nayeon looked at her with the same angered look on her face but the glossy eyes very much showed that something had changed with the explanation.

The eldest occupant of the room shifted a little, squaring her shoulders. She was very much aware of the burning pain that started to engulf her torso with the reminder that she has been sat up for too long.

It irritated her.

“Because I can’t walk? That’s the reasoning that you all agreed with,” Nayeon bit out. “Funnily enough, it’s not particularly my fucking fault that I can’t walk,” and she put her eyes back onto her sister. “Is it Jeongyeon?”

Jeongyeon only closed her eyes because she really didn’t need to hear the same proclamations of blame that she thought herself said out loud.

“Now you have nothing to say?”

Tzuyu took note of the way Jeongyeon slightly swayed in place – Dahyun did too and she stood up from her chair because of it.

Walking over to the duo, she placed a steady hand on Jeongyeon’s back sharing a space with Tzuyu. The both of them were aware of the jagged breath that the woman sucked in.

“Unnie it wasn’t her fault either,” Tzuyu spoke out to Nayeon, pleading unearthed in her voice.

“You weren’t there Tzu. You have absolutely no idea what happened,” Nayeon replied in a voice that was slowly losing its fire but not enough to be obviously noticeable.

“I know enough to not blame her for it,” and Tzuyu looked towards Dahyun briefly as she finished her statement. “Facts are facts and you can’t change that. She. Is. Not. Responsible.”

And that was all it took to reignite the fire that Nayeon constantly felt. “Circumstances can’t be changed either,” she said in voice that got louder with every other word.

The tension between each inhabitant of the room strengthened like a rubber band being pulled from opposite ends.

However, the rubber band snapped with one muttered sentence that every single occupant of the room heard.  

“Sometimes I wish that it was me instead,” the small sentence was interrupted by her own scoff. “Better yet, I wish it were you instead,” and she pointedly looked at Jeongyeon as she said so.

Jeongyeon visibly bristled at that. Her breaths were coming out soft but ragged and at that point Chaeyoung had enough.

She listened as Nayeon continued to berate Jeongyeon. She noticed how every single word rolled off of the other woman’s back like sludge. And she had enough.

Ghosts are generated energy forms of one’s prior physical self. The energy isn’t always passive nor is the energy neutral. Sometimes the energy is negative and when it’s punctuated by heightened emotional distress it manifests itself physically.

Which is what happened when the cup on Nayeon’s table threw itself to the wall opposite of it. This was at the same moment that Tzuyu loudly proclaimed a distraught and watered “unnie” into the room.

Chaeyoung wished that she could focus on anything other than how quiet everything was. She couldn’t hear what was being said but she could see everyone’s lips moving.

Her head hurt – like a lot – and she felt a little dizzy.

But it didn’t matter to her. Not when Jeongyeon’s shaky “okay” made its way to her ears. Not when said woman bolted out of the room.

She really needed to follow after her, but she felt like she was trudging in mud.

She trailed behind her anyhow, just much slower than she would like.

\---0---

****Slight trigger warning in this section – I’ll bold the first sentences for when it begins and ends.****

Momo strolled around the city long after she finished doing so with Chaeyoung. She never did do that much when she was alive so she made sure to do so now while she could.

Today was a day where she just felt like being by herself and with that goal for her day, she was located at her favorite spot – at the green house on top of the biology building.

She was currently laying on the lone bench of the room, the one that sat right across from her favorite flowers – the one that she sat on with Chaeyoung.

She always enjoyed the serenity that only the green house gave her. It was because of the oftentimes quiet atmosphere that surrounded the area.

She liked being there even more so after she died because the only people that came up there were the members of the environmental club  – Jihyo had come up earlier to put a tiny potted bud on one of the front tables.

And no one else. It had always been that way even when she was alive.

 **She found it interesting just how undisturbed the atmosphere was there.** It was even more interesting when that same environment was shattered by the door to the roof surging open in a display of force.

The sound of the door creaking forcibly from its hinges was chased behind by the sound of agitated weeping. The sound of the door slamming close could also be heard and the sound of something – or a few somethings – thudding against it.

The crying was striking to Momo. It was a type of pain that she heard from her sisters and her parents. It sounded like it hurt. She hoped that they weren’t hurt enough to do what filtered through her own thoughts.

She sat up from her position on the bench in a nervous curiosity, really hoping that the person would make their way into the green house.

They didn’t and because of that she stood up quickly to walk towards them.

Exiting the area, she stood face to face with the back of a woman sitting on her knees on the roof. She walked a little closer when the woman began to frantically tug at her shirt. She was a little more than concerned especially with how the woman was to the edge of the roof.

She moved until she was standing a few feet behind her in silence on her part and anything but that on the part of the still hysterical woman. She couldn’t make out a single word being said by said woman.

Momo was startled by three things: one, she could hear someone yelling a name from the door that was clearly barricaded from the outside.

Two, the distraught woman stood up abruptly and glanced at said door for a moment. Momo moved a little bit closer to her and she thought she could hear the woman’s heartbeat. The woman turned in a way that revealed her face.

It was Chaeyoung’s sister Jeongyeon. The heartbeats got a little louder and she realized that it was the sound of closed fists hitting the door. Striking the surface one, two, three times.

Three, Jeongyeon stepped towards the edge of the roof.

As quick as she could, Momo closed the few feet between her and Jeongyeon by promptly teleporting to her. She hoped that she had enough energy in her form to physically affect the woman.

She did.

With a hand on Jeongyeon’s right arm, Momo yanked her back as far as she could with a frantic _don’t do that_ escaping her lips. Her eyes trailed briefly after a streamer that fluttered off of the roof before connecting the body on the roof with her.

Jeongyeon landed in a heap with an incredibly pained cry. Momo noticed the woman grip her left arm in obvious pain.

Momo started to increasingly feel disoriented and became highly unsteady on her own feet. She looked towards the sound of pounding – which began to get quieter – and she yanked the large flower pot that blocked the door over with whatever energy she could find.

 **She watched as another woman stumbled onto the roof pausing her attention on the pot that laid a few inches from her feet.** She recognized her briefly as one of Chaeyoung’s friends but she couldn’t remember her name at the moment.

She couldn’t see enough to make out who she was in any rate. Her head was throbbing.

She blanked out for a moment, coming to with the presence of someone yelling in her face. The woman was smaller than her and looked slightly familiar.  

She nodded to whatever the woman was saying even though she really couldn’t hear. Her head lolled to the side for a moment while she searched through the recesses of her mind for a name.

The smaller woman attempted to shake her and looked slightly startled that she couldn’t touch her. She was a ghost, why would she even be able to be touched.

She raised her hand in front of the speaking woman’s face to get her to stop speaking. In doing so, she noticed that her hand was a little – a lot – more transparent than usual.

She identified what was happening to her and spoke to the woman who had hands hovering near her arms. “Chaeyoung? Chaeyoung, I’ll see you soon,” and with that sleep laced sentence, she was gone.

Chaeyoung blinked at the space where Momo previously stood. She was alarmed at the woman’s departure but she slightly understood what happened. _You get too tired, you pass out_ , Momo once told her.

She finally looked toward her sobbing sister and a frantic Dahyun checking her for injuries not previously had by her. Jeongyeon had a scrape along her right arm and she was clutching her wrist again – her birthday streamer was missing.

From what she could make out, because she still couldn’t hear much, her sister tried to jump off of the roof. And Chaeyoung wished she had the energy to do something other than walk sluggishly towards her.

She crouched down in front of the unseeing pair before speaking out, _I love you so much. Please don’t do that again. I don’t want to see you like me anytime soon._

And she hoped to God that the message could be heard even though she knew it wouldn’t.

She sat a few paces from her sister and best friend, slumping next to one of the fertilizer bags. She ran a hand over her face before closing her eyes to the sound of two people crying and one asking for forgiveness that she never needed.


	4. Click

“Just a memory of you is not enough. _I wish that I took more photographs of us_.” – Photographs | Professor Green feat. Rag’n’Bone Man

**Momo | November 8, 2018**

It had been awhile since she had been cognitively conscious of her surroundings; and the first thing that Momo was aware of was the colorful and vivid lights that danced along her sight. She blinked back at the intrusion, regardless of the fact that the tiny constellations still remained.

She groaned to herself and closed her eyes, moving sluggish arms towards her face in the process. She pressed the palms of both of her hands to her eyelids in the hopes of dispelling the lurid bursts of colors.

She dropped her arms to her sides, letting them bounce off of whatever surface that they landed on. She opened her eyes once she thought that the dots of lights would be expelled from her vision and was relieved that they were.

She let her eyes roam her surroundings, focusing on the white glow in the dark stickers that were strategically placed on the ceiling. Scanning her eyes along it, she took in a different constellation than the one before. This one made up the familiar constellation of Boötes – which indicated that she was not only in her apartment, but her room.

(Constellations were a shared interest between her and her sisters and each had their favorite plastered on their respective ceiling).

It had actually been awhile since she had been in her room post-death. She usually draped herself over the foot of Sana’s bed or tucked herself into one of Mina’s gaming chairs whenever she felt the need to rest.

But she had never felt her current level of exhaustion before and she supposed that saving someone’s life would take a lot out of a form made entirely of energy.

(She hoped that said woman was doing okay now – and Chaeyoung as well).

She was glad that she had at least found some way to end up in her room after the entire ordeal was over. She’s not entirely sure how she managed that but she’s thankful nonetheless.

She stretched her body out along the couch in her room, listening to her joints stretch and snap with the action. Settling back down, she could hear the familiar rumblings of noise that followed one of her sisters around like a shadow.

She could hear Sana yelling just outside of her door and the pitter pat of her feet on the hardwood – as well as that of two tiny animals following in her wake.

“Hey, Mina? I’m going to meet Jihyo for a late lunch,” came the pitched voice. She was answered by the sound of a door opening and a much softer voice drifting out from said room.

“Okay. What time are you going to be home,” Mina asked with each word sounding closer than the last. The soft padding of her feet could be heard and if Momo cared to look, she could see two sets of feet outside of her door.

“It’ll be somewhere around dinner time. What are you up to today,” Sana asked her in return.

Any answer was temporarily halted as the sound of something smacking the surface of her door echoed through her room. Momo stifled a chuckle at the sound of a whiney sounding “ow” that she knows came from Sana.

(The older woman tended to put on her socks as she walked to the front of the apartment and almost always crashed into the wall or other surfaces).

Her muted chuckles escaped her as the sound of Mina’s own laughter rang down the hall as she struggled to ask if the older of the two if she was okay. She was answered by a petulant sounding ‘I’m okay’ as the now eldest child repeated her question.

“The usual, hanging around here. I’ll probably take the dogs for a walk later, your son has been restless all day,” she finally answered, laughter curling around her first few words.

Sana could be heard giggling slightly at the comment and the knowledge that Xuxi was currently weaving in between both of their legs as Ray watched from down the hall.

Momo zoned out a bit with the sounds of Sana and Mina walking down the hall settling as muffled background noises. She considered what to do with her day. She didn’t know if she wanted to trek out to find Chaeyoung or nose around with Sana and Jihyo.

She settled for staying in, she was still kind of tired anyway.

She shuffled on the couch in her a room a bit before rolling off of it entirely. She was completely unbothered by her body connecting to the floor with a thud. She rolled around a bit out of pure boredom before laying on her back, staring at the ceiling – eyes tracing the stickers in a habit of peace.

The sound of her door creaking open brought her attention to. She propped herself up, leaning back on her palms as she watched a tentative Mina stand at the door of her room.

The younger woman entered the room and looked around as if she hadn’t been there in months – which was probably true. She walked over to the recently abandoned couch and unknowingly stepped on Momo’s ankle.

The non-corporal woman narrowed her eyes at the foot that essentially whooshed through her own before turning entirely towards Mina’s direction.

The younger woman was searching the wall that was littered with Polaroids from throughout the years, analyzing them with determination in her eyes that Momo hadn’t seen in quite a while.

She watched as her baby sister nodded to herself before muttering something under her breath that even she couldn’t hear in the stillness of the room.

The embodied woman moved to stand on top of the couch so that she could grab one of the higher placed photographs, standing on her tippy toes to do so. After grabbing one that Momo couldn’t really see, she dropped down to the couch below her feet and sat down – allowing herself the time to look at the photo in her hand.

Momo couldn’t see what the photo was but she could read the inscription on the back of it. In stringy Japanese written by a much younger Momo, it read: _Okaa-san took this photo of us the day that we were adopted. It’s been 4 years since. I’m happy._ The caption punctuated by a crooked smiley face as a stopping point.

A smile grew Momo’s face as she knew exactly what photo it was. Said picture came into view as Mina flipped the Polaroid over.

In the photo was a five year old Mina and a soon to be six year old Momo and Sana. Mina was in the center of the photo with Momo on her left and Sana to her right. The older duo were bent down slightly – because Mina was extra tiny as a child – and kissing either side of the girl’s face.

Sana had a kiss pressed to Mina’s cheek and had a peace sign held up to the camera by her left hand that was hovered above her head.

Momo had a kiss pressed to Mina’s temple – it was a move familiar to them both as Momo would always kiss her head in situations that could unnerve the younger girl. She held Mina’s left hand with her right and connected her free hand with Sana’s as they rested their intertwined hands across Mina’s stomach.

There was also a party hat on Momo’s head because she and Mina were adopted on the day before her birthday.

Momo’s smile was soft as she gazed at the photo and it became decidedly softer at the sniffle that had left Mina. The entirety of the younger woman’s face was rapidly becoming red and her eyes became watery.

She stood up abruptly and let out a sad chuckle before holding the photo close to her chest – where her heart was located.

She stared at the decorated wall a little longer before she stalked away towards the door to leave the no longer lived in room. She threw a glance at the bare wall that used to be obstructed by Momo’s bed.

(They had sold said bed in the hopes of cleaning out Momo’s room, but they never got the heart to remove the decorations and intricacies of the room).

Momo’s eyes trailed after her form in longing before she aimed her gaze to the photo filled wall. A pang of sadness left her. She was good at navigating through others’ emotions but she was never good at assessing her own. So, she laid back down on the floor ignoring the impending sadness that she felt.

She hummed briefly to herself, some song that Sana once swore was the best thing ever. Her humming came to a halt at the sound of footfalls rushing pass her door. She was slightly alarmed before hearing Mina’s voice speaking out to the dogs to behave, the front door closing in her wake.

“Huh, well where is she going,” Momo muttered to herself as she got up in an attempt to follow after her. She made it to the front door before pausing for a moment to coo at the two puppies lying in front of it in a rare showing of patience.

 **\---** 0---

Momo had found herself mindlessly wandering throughout town. She had lost Mina after spending too much time cooing at the two puppy, puppy pile by their front door. She did, however, find Sana and Jihyo in her place.

The couple were walking along the sidewalk, arm and arm with a bag sandwiched between them from whatever food place that they ate at. Momo had been trailing behind them for around ten minutes, the two strolling wherever and stopping to window shop at any place of interest.

Jihyo was talking to Sana – who was listening attentively, very engrossed with the conversation – with big hand gestures from her one free hand.

The younger woman would occasionally pause her hand movements to shield her eyes from the sun.

Momo chuckled at the sheer annoyance that she could feel radiating from the youngest as she walked closer to the two.

Sana got tired of Jihyo working so hard to combat the sun’s rays, so she paused the two of them in the middle of the sidewalk and slightly out of the way of everyone trying to get somewhere.

She unwrapped her arm from Jihyo’s – but still holding onto their leftovers – and stood in front of the younger woman, back facing. She bent backwards a little so that her head was blocking almost all of Jihyo’s line of sight.

Jihyo made an adorable static sound from the back of her throat before her pearls of laughter could be heard bouncing down the street. She attempted to nudge Sana forward to straighten her back but the other woman would just pull backwards again.

“Stop it, you’re going to hurt your back,” she halfheartedly complained amidst her laughter.

Sana puffed out her cheeks in defiance before explaining in a matter of fact tone, “yeah, but you’d give me a massage until it stopped hurting.”

Sana’s own laughter joined the fray as Jihyo lightly jabbed her sides with a huff of faux annoyance.

Sana stood up straight but didn’t move from her position in front of Jihyo, still blocking her from the sun.

Jihyo, in turn, rested her head on Sana’s back and hooked her arms around the older woman’s torso, tickling her slightly before she left her hands still to rest flat at the sound of tinkling laughter.

“I forgot to ask at lunch but, are you doing okay today,” Jihyo asked as the duo resumed walking, waddling at a slow pace to compensate for having to walk together.

“We’re okay, I think,” Sana answered slightly unsure. Jihyo ran her fingers lightly across Sana’s stomach, waiting patiently for her to elaborate.

“It’s- Mina’s been kind of quiet for the last couple of days, more so than usual,” Sana began. Jihyo hummed into her back in acknowledgment.

“She’s been tip toeing around lately. I didn’t exactly expect her to be the happiest of kids considering the fact that today is what it is and tomorrow is too but, I don’t know. She’s just different somehow,” she finished, shoulders sagging a little in dejection.

Jihyo squeezed her sides before throwing out a suggestion, “have you tried talking to her? I know her and I know you know she’ll tell you if something’s wrong if you ask.”

Sana bobbed her head in agreement before answering, “I tried but she said that nothing was wrong. Usually I would take that at face value yet her eyes did that shimmering thing it does when she’s not telling the truth.”

There was a beat of silence before she added, “plus, she’s been so; what’s the word? Reluctant, I guess, to discuss anything about Momo that isn’t surface level. At best she’ll give out a sad smile, at worst she won’t say a word and ease out of the subject. And I let her.”

Momo perked up at the usage of her name before deflating slightly at the same moment. She very much noticed how Mina’s personality has been in regards to her since she died.

She instinctively tuned the pair out when she caught sight of a slightly hunkered down figure from the corner of her eye. Said figure leaving the nearby crafts store looked suspiciously like the current subject of Sana and Jihyo’s conversation.

If it wasn’t the walk that gave her away, it was the fact that she was wearing Momo’s frayed denim jacket – one that the three of them often took turns wearing.

It also helped that Mina had panicked slightly when she noticed Sana and Jihyo across the street from her and promptly headed within the opposite direction.

She considered following her, after all she was looking for her when she stumbled onto Sana and Jihyo. However, something in her told her to leave her be and she did just that.

She tuned back into her surroundings in time to see the adorable couple waddle their way into a nearby bakery.

\---0---

Some hours later, Sana walked into their apartment with a bag of leftovers and a box from the bakery in tow yelling for Mina. She – and Momo – quirked an eyebrow when the sound of a resounding thud floated to their ears from down the hall.

Mina came into the foyer – excitedly yapping puppies in tow – with a disheveled appearance. Her sweater was on inside out, her hair was untidy and band aids littered both of her hands.

Momo considered stalking towards the messy looking woman’s room. Sana had the same idea as a teasing, “is there a boy in this apartment” escaped her lips.

The comment was met with a whining Mina and a disgruntled answer of “no.” Sana chuckling immediately at the displeasure on her little sister’s face.

(If they were younger, in a reaction learned from Momo, she would have kicked her leg in discontentment).

“It’s not anything like that,” Mina began in a voice coated in faux annoyance. “I had to change my shirt and I didn’t know if Hyo came with you so I was in a rush. Plus, I tripped but it’s fine and- why are you looking at me like that?”

Sana schooled her knowing face to one of nonchalance, “looking at you like what Minari?”

Mina narrowed her eyes at the change of expression on her sister’s face, “like you don’t believe a word out of my mouth.”

Sana snorted out a laugh and moved to grab one of the younger woman’s wrists before speaking, “I do. But, you only ramble when you’re hiding something. I know you’ll tell me whenever you’re ready, so I won’t press you on that.”

Mina’s eyes softened at the considerate response from her sister, pouting slightly – as she does with any display of cuteness from either sister.

Sana cooed at the adorable face and pulled her in for a hug. Mina nestled her head against the crook of Sana’s neck as the eldest of the two swayed lightly side to side.

She pulled back from the hug after a moment, but left her arms wrapped around Mina for a second, “Jihyo and I brought you something.”

Mina quirked her eyebrow in question but only watched as Sana untangled herself from the remainder of the hug.

The older woman moved to grab the bakery box that she placed on the end table by the couch. She started talking as she gathered the box and searched around in the drawer for a lighter.

“I know neither of us really feel like celebrating a thing this year for the very obvious reason that three became two. But, I couldn’t with good conscience not celebrate today even if it’s nothing but sadness looming around us.”

Mina gazed at her sister standing in front of her with an opened box filled with three cupcakes with several emotions swimming in her eyes. Her favorite cupcake – chocolate banana cream – was situated to the left, Sana’s equally cavity inducing mud pie cupcake to the right, and Momo’s modest oreo cupcake in the middle.

There was a message scribbled on the top of the box in pretty but slanted written Japanese:

_I know it’s different this time around, and it will be for the remainder of our years, but I am still as thankful for you as I was almost two decades ago. I’ve loved you ever since you gave me your cookie on the first day we met with a soft “Mo-chan said cookies are how you make friends.” I love you baby sis (+ Momorin too). It’s you and I until we have nowhere else to be. Happy Anniversary, Love Satang._

Mina’s eyes watered half way through the intricate passage and she was trying everything in her to not break down over a small group of cupcakes. However, all was lost with a simple look at Sana whose own tears were traveling down her face.

Through her slightly blurred sight, Sana placed a candle on each cupcake and lit all of them but the middle one. “I’ll light Momo’s in a few hours for her birthday,” she said in a watery tone.

“Make a wish,” she whispered out.

The duo made their wishes to themselves – centered on childish wants and impossible thoughts – before blowing out their respective candle.

Mina took one look at Sana and gently grabbed the box from her hands. She walked over to their kitchen and carefully placed the box down on their counter when she did. She then turned around and walked briskly back to her sister, engulfing her into a bone crushing hug when she got there.

The air was filled with the sounds of two people breaking and rebuilding their hearts all at once. And the pang of sadness that Momo felt earlier returned tenfold. She couldn’t do a thing but stand in the middle of the room and watch them both with her own watery eyes.

She watched as Mina fisted the back of Sana’s shirt in an attempt to ground herself.

She watched as Sana locked her arms around Mina’s neck, cheek rested on the younger woman’s shoulder.

She listened as Mina wept and Sana’s attempts of soothing her were hindered by her own sobs.

And it hurt.

After ten minutes or so of crying, Mina finally pulled away from Sana before looking down at her feet. She started harshly wiping at her face and muttered something to herself that neither Sana nor Momo could strain themselves to hear.

Sana stepped up to Mina, pulling her hands away from her face before she hurt herself. “Hey, stop that,” Sana told her, shushing her as she did so.

“Sana,” Mina spoke, voice straining against her. “Can I show you something?”

Sana squeezed the hands in her grasp in acknowledgment and nodded as an okay.

Mina removed her hands from Sana’s grasp before intertwining one of their hands together as she led them to Momo’s room.

When they got to the closed door, Mina took a nervous breath before leading them both into the room. Walking into the room with all puppies – including Momo – in tow, they stood in the center of the aforementioned woman’s room.

The two oldest sisters gazed at the wall that used to be completely bare in astonishment.

Like the wall parallel to it, the wall was covered in photos. However, instead of it being various Polaroids detailing many things, it was numerous photos creating one singular picture.

The picture was of the three sisters of them plus Jihyo when they had went to Jeju Island in the summer of last year. They were on an overlook with a purple and orange sky as their backdrop for their mostly silhouetted forms.

Momo had an arm slugged around Sana’s neck, bright smile on both of their faces while Mina was draped around Jihyo in a sad attempt of a piggyback – one foot was on the ground while the other wrapped along her best friend’s waist – with their own happy smiles in place.

(It was a picture perfect photo, which was ironic considering that Mina toppled her and Jihyo forward after the photo was taken – the piggyback didn’t go well – and Sana started yelling due to the chokehold Momo gradually pulled her in).

It was perfect, it was them and it was Momo’s favorite photo.

“How did-,” Sana started as she turned briefly towards Mina before her eyes floated back to the sight in front of her.

“It took, a while, a few days just to get the photos right. That’s why I had been kind of aloof for the last few days, I was trying to keep it as a surprise. I’m sorry for worrying you,” Mina answered.

Sana met her eyes before leaning forward and kissing her on the forehead, “it’s okay Minari. You did well.” She pulled one of her sister’s hand in her own, scrutinizing the bandages on her fingers.

“It wasn’t without a few paper cuts, but I wanted to do this for her. I remember when she had first got into photography, she had said that she wanted to blow up a picture like this,” Mina started.

She got suddenly shy before asking Sana in a quieter than usual whisper, “do you think she would like it?”

Sana blinked back to the wall before pulling Mina into her side, “she’d love it.”

Momo nodded in agreement as she stood to the corporal duo’s left. She looked at her sister’s hard work on something that she did solely for her.

She thought back to the cupcake Sana had gotten her for two days that she’ll never get to celebrate again.

She thought about every single thing that either of her sisters had done for her since she met them individually and together.

And for the very first time she felt the gleaming loss of a life that she could not live with them anymore. She felt like she could feel everything and nothing and she absolutely hated it. .

\---0---

Momo’s day started off with her looking at the constellations that dotted across her eyes and decorated her ceiling and she would end her day looking at the ones that festooned her sister’s ceiling.

(Mina’s constellation was Cygnus, also known as the Swan. It was very fitting. Sana’s was Delphinus, Latin for Dolphin. Fitting for her laugh, ironic in lieu of Momo’s death).

She was lying on Mina’s bed with the woman next to her in a position long familiar to all four of them – Jihyo had joined them that night.

The sisters would pile on either siblings’ bed in a pattern that was never changing regardless if one of them were missing or not. The spots were reserved for them anyhow.

Mina would sit cross legged in the space to Momo’s right – although she was laying down this time. Sana would rest her head in Mina’s lap if the younger woman was sitting up or lie on top of her as she did now.

Jihyo’s position depended on the same. If Mina was sitting up and Sana was lying between her legs, she would lay her head on her girlfriend’s stomach with her legs dangled over Momo’s, usually tangling together in some odd fashion at some point. If the positions were not that, she’d lay on Momo in a way similar to Sana with Mina.

(Momo usually proceeded by remarking that she was stealing Sana's girlfriend and press light kisses over Jihyo’s face until one or both of her sisters punched her in the arm – it was usually Mina with a bored “stop giving my best friend your cooties you weirdo” following behind).

Today, she was tucked into Mina’s right side with a hand sleepily carding through her hair.

Mina lolled her head to the side – past Jihyo’s hair that she was messily running her hands through – to look at the alarm clock on her nightstand. She had to narrow her eyes past the oreo cupcake with a no longer burning candle resting on the table in order to read the big red numbers of: _12:08am._

She looked down at the two figures crowding her space and listened to the sound of both Ray and Xuxi snoring from their places on the floor. She could hear the slight grumbling from Sana – because even in sleep, the older woman was still not silent – and the light breathing from Jihyo.

She turned her attention to the left of her, where Momo would have been – where she was.

“Happy Birthday Momorin,” the younger woman whispered out, closing her eyes as she did so. Momo cooed at the sleepy woman and smiled at the “I love you” given to her through a yawn.

 _I love you too, always. Thank you for everything._ She said in reply before going to sleep herself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the super late update, I had to finish my semester. Hope you enjoy.


	5. Help is Needed

“ _It’s all too much for me_. Blow away, like smoke in the air. How can you die carelessly?” | Six Feet Under – Billie Eilish

**Chaeyoung | November 14, 2018**

“How long have you been dead?”

She lurched her head towards the direction of the voice, a look of surprise plastered on her face. Her eyes scanned the owner of the voice, settling on eyes coated with kindness. The owner was a woman that stood with the familiar stance of nonchalance and with a voice lilted by delight.

One, two, three. She blinked once, twice and a third time before she found her voice to answer with a pleased cadence.

“You know, someone asked me that same question a few weeks ago,” an amused chuckle punctuating her sentence.

She was answered by a laughter coated, “did you now? What did you say to them?”

Chaeyoung chuckled, deciding to carry on with the charade.

“I asked them if they were supposed to ask that and they only shrugged in reply. As for you, I still don’t think you’re supposed to ask that,” she finished saying. She threw a beaming smile at the person who was toeing her bare feet along the sidewalk in her typical relaxed manner.

She then watched as said person gave her a goofy shrug of her shoulders and then slid her hands into the respective pockets of her sweatpants.

(It felt so much like the first time they met, that it felt a little jarring. Three weeks felt like three month. But regardless, she was happy to see her).

“Hi Momo,” Chaeyoung said with giddiness coating every word as she walked towards the woman who met her with a happy smile.

Momo pulled a hand out of its residence in her pocket and ruffled Chaeyoung’s hair fondly, messing up her bangs in the process. “Hey kiddo, long time no see.”

She let out a chuckle at the younger woman who let out a huff in faux annoyance. She proceeded to chuckle a little more at the sight of said woman blowing a strand of hair out of her face.

While she was in the process of adjusting her hair, Chaeyoung caught up a bit with her unexpected company. “Yeah, it has been awhile. How are you doing? Are you well rested?”

Momo nodded along absentmindedly before verbally answering. “I am. Rest was definitely something that I needed. Speaking of, how’s your sister doing?”

Chaeyoung let her arm fall back to her side before answering. She was now devoid of her previous smile and with a more somber look plastered on her face, “she’s doing about as well as expected. She actually starts therapy soon.”

She watched as Momo’s eyes softened at the sentence, “I’m glad. It’ll hopefully do her some good. I hope the best for her.”

Chaeyoung watched as realization danced across Momo’s eyes before the other woman added, “Oh, is that why you’re here?”

(It was not lost on either party that there was a psychologist’s office on the street across from them).

“Not completely. Jeongyeon is seeing my psychiatrist but, my friends are the one seeing the psychologist,” Chaeyoung replied.

(The difference between the two professions was lost on her).

“Ah, yeah that makes sense. My sister and her girlfriend are seeing the same one,” Momo began. She then turned her attention to just slightly above Chaeyoung’s shoulder.

“Speaking of.”

Chaeyoung turned around to see two unfamiliar figures walking in their general direction. She smiled softly at the couple that were swinging their interlocked hands in large, childish arcs.

“Which one’s your sister,” she asked, eyes still focused on the couple. She only startled out of it when she felt a presence behind her.

Momo had moved to stand behind Chaeyoung with her front pressed softly against the younger woman’s back.

(And if she could still do so, Chaeyoung would have probably blushed at the action).

The older woman pointed over Chaeyoung’s right shoulder – letting her arm rest there as she did so – at the taller woman with maroon hair and a subdued smile on her face.

“That’s Sana and the tiny one, who was probably the sun in a past life, is her girlfriend Jihyo.”

Chaeyoung was still smiling at the duo as they made their way closer, a “they’re adorable” escaping her mouth as the two moved in tandem.

“That they are,” Momo replied before the corporal duo’s conversation could be heard.

The couple stopped a few feet in front of where Chaeyoung and Momo stood and the first voice that could be heard was from Sana.

“Are you still wanting to head to the café while I check us in across the street?”

They spectral duo watched as Jihyo leaned into Sana’s space for a hug, a muffled “yeah” leaving her lips. She pulled back slightly before she posed her own question, “do you want anything, sweetheart?”

Sana could be seen running her hands up and down Jihyo’s back as she answered, “a cherry tea would be fine. Thank you, baby.”

The ghostly two watched as the oldest of the couple bent down to kiss the youngest woman’s forehead and then her cheek – both women giggling all the while – before muttering a “see you soon” against her skin.

Sana then proceeded to jog lightly across the street that separated the two sides. She turned around for a moment to wave goofily at her girlfriend that was still watching her and almost tripped in the process.

A giggle surrounded a yelled “be careful” which was met by an equally amused “you didn’t see that” in response.

Jihyo turned around once she saw Sana enter the clinic, with her smile still in place, and came face to face with two people trying to enter the café at the same time as her.

“Oh, sorry,” said woman spoke, unconsciously speaking the phrase in English after having almost run into the two.

“ _Ah, and speaking of my friends, that would be them,_ ” Chaeyoung said once she realized who the duo at the café door was.

(Momo moved her chin to rest on Chaeyoung’s head and Chaeyoung was past the point of being flustered by it).

“ _Who’s who_?”

Chaeyoung didn’t bother to physically point at who was who.

However, what Chaeyoung did do, for no reason at all, was sway her head from left to right slightly. She jostled Momo as she did so and the older woman lightly laughed at the abrupt movement.

A small, absentminded smile made its presence known on Chaeyoung’s face as the two watched the newly created trio awkwardly shuffle into the café.

Chaeyoung cleared her throat once before finally answering Momo’s question, “ _the tall one with the baby face is Tzuyu and the tiny ball of fluff is Dahyun. Dahyun was the one who was on the roof with you and Jeongyeon.”_

A mischievous smile grew on Momo’s face. However, before Chaeyoung could question the look, the older woman commented amid small chuckles.

“ _You have some nerve calling someone tiny._ ”

Chaeyoung paused for a moment in mild disbelief, an eye twitching a single time at the boisterous laugh that erupted from Momo.

A sulky “ _hey”_ left her mouth as Momo continued to laugh at her.

“ _I’m **taller** than her. You just can’t tell because all of her shoes have lifts in them_ ,” she said in a petulant tone. She reduced her face to a pout as Momo’s laughs only calmed down slightly.

Chaeyoung jokingly stalked away from a silently giggling Momo into the half-filled café, taking a spot next to the counter. Momo quickly followed after her and then she back hugged Chaeyoung – in a manner reminiscent to how they stood outside – when she got to her.

“ _Chaeyoung-ah, I was kidding,”_ Momo said, burying her head between the space where Chaeyoung’s neck and shoulder met.

Chaeyoung hummed in acknowledgment. She turned her head to the side to make eye contact with Momo. Giving her a dimpled smile, she gave her a playful wink before turning her attention to their friends.

The trio were third, fourth, and fifth in line – starting with Jihyo and ending with Tzuyu – and the younger two could be heard quietly discussing their upcoming therapy session.

Dahyun could be seen maneuvering slowly on the balls of her feet. Her arms were clasped behind her back in what Chaeyoung knew was an obvious display of nerves.

“Do you think joining a group therapy session was a good decision for us,” she asked the younger of the two without ever turning her attention towards her.

Tzuyu moved her hands to grab Dahyun’s that were clasped in front of her. She the older woman’s hands apart before holding them, with one hand in each of her own.

She rested her head on the smaller woman’s shoulder – similar to that of Momo with Chaeyoung – and shuffled forward with her as the line moved.

“I don’t know if it is, but I think that it would be. I don’t know how much it will help us but I do know that it would do us good to talk about it with someone other than each other. Especially because we seemingly only talk about it when neither of us can stay asleep or go to sleep,” Tzuyu began.

She nuzzled into the crevice of Dahyun’s left shoulder and sucked in a breath before continuing.

“It’s been… hard and we’ve changed so much. Neither of us fit our old personalities and we’ve had to make do with the changes. We really need the help unnie. We’re handling it better than Nayeon unnie and Jeongyeon unnie, but we can only do so much alone.”

Dahyun inflated her cheeks with air before exhaling heavily, “you’ve grown a lot you know?”

Tzuyu gave her a chuckle that leant more towards sad than any other emotion, “I kind of had to.”

The end of their discussion came at the beginning of another – between Jihyo and the man at the counter.

“Hey Doyoung? Can you put whatever the two behind me order on Sana’s and I tab,” Jihyo asked. This resulted in Dahyun and Tzuyu immediately turning their attention to her, set on politely declining the offer.

“ _Wow, she’s really nice,_ ” Chaeyoung remarked as her two friends politely argued against her offer.

 _“I told you, she’s the sun,”_ Momo responded, smiling wholeheartedly at her friend.

Jihyo put her hand up to silence the duo lightly bickering with her, thankful that they were the last ones in line. She gave the two of them a friendly smile as she explained her reasoning to them.

“Hey, it’s no problem. We’re going to the same session and I figured that you guys could do with a little good today,” she began while moving over to the pick-up side of the counter. She kept her eyes on the duo as she moved away.

She threw a pair of large puppy eyes at them in an attempt of persuasion with a slightly aegyo filled, “please, let me pay?”

Chaeyoung whistled lowly before tossing a comment towards Momo, _“Oh, she’s good, real good and they will fold like a bad poker hand.”_

She let out an unattractive – by her standards, Momo smiled at the sound – snort at Dahyun attempting to cover Tzuyu’s eyes with her hand to shield her from the adorable sight.

Dahyun muttered a defeated “no, don’t look Chewy” in the process before nodding at Jihyo, hesitantly so, that it was okay for her to pay.

Tzuyu removed the hand that was covering her eyes and then pulled away from Dahyun to give a deep bow to Jihyo in gratitude – Dahyun, of course, following her example.

“Alright, alright,” Jihyo said after a moment, with a red dust lightly coating her cheeks. She was steadily growing flustered at the two young women still in the middle of their respectful bows.

“Order whatever you want, the session starts in twenty minutes,” Jihyo finished before collecting her black coffee and Sana’s tea as she waited for the two younger women to join her by the café door.

\---0---

One of the first tidbits out of the psychologist’s mouth was the prospect that ‘all roads lead to here.’ It was a concept that Chaeyoung disliked.

To her, it meant that all roads – no matter which she took, no matter the direction – led to her death at the age of twenty. It meant that all roads led to Momo sharing a similar fate.

To her, it meant that all roads led to her sisters struggling just to move forward and through another day. It meant that all roads led to the same for Momo’s sisters.

To her, it meant that all roads led to her being here, yet not physically, in a way that she didn’t understand.

To her, it meant she was a ghost sitting on the floor in between Dahyun and Tzuyu as they participate in their first session of group therapy. It meant that all roads let to Momo sitting across from her in a similar manner between Jihyo and Sana.

It was a concept that she disliked because to her, it meant fate. She never wanted this to be her fate. But, there was nothing that she could do.

Chaeyoung, in her mild stupor, made prolonged eye contact with Momo. The other woman only raised an eyebrow in question before asking her if she was okay.

It took a few tries of asking before Chaeyoung nodded absentmindedly in answer. She waved the concern off before paying attention to the session at hand.

“We have two new members joining our session tonight,” the psychologist began. He turned directly to address the two newcomers. “I’m Doctor Yoon. If you two would like to do so, you can introduce yourselves and share why you’re here.”

Chaeyoung leant backwards, resting her weight on her hands. The new position allowed herself to easily view the women on either side of her.

Tzuyu and Dahyun made eye contact with one another, chuckling nervously before one decided to speak first.

“Um,” the shorter of the two started, clearing her throat after the first syllable. “I’m Kim Dahyun, twenty-one years old. Uh, sorry. This is our first time doing this type of thing.”

Chaeyoung angled her body towards the speaking woman a little, feeling the nerves radiating from her easily. Dahyun shivered once, as if she could sense her presence before continuing.

“A friend of ours,” – she gestured towards Tzuyu at that part – “died recently. It’s been… difficult dealing with that. We could use a little help so, that’s why we’re here.”

Her sentence finished with an awkward smile towards the members of the circle. Her eyes met Jihyo’s for a fleeting moment before they landed onto her companion, taking in the soft smile being given to her. She then turned her attention onto the hands fidgeting in her lap.

The taller of the two spoke next, turning her attention to the room and off of Dahyun. “I’m Chou Tzuyu and I’m twenty years old,” she bowed her head forward slightly in greeting.

Chaeyoung tittered at that, saying out loud that Tzuyu was _“always the polite one.”_

Momo caught her attention again, with another question on the tip of her tongue: “ _Hey Chaeyoung, how old were you?”_

Chaeyoung answered her almost immediately, “ _I’m twenty, only a few months older than Tzuyu. How old are you?”_

Momo considered it for a second before she replied, “ _I was twenty-two, but my birthday was a few days ago so I would have been twenty-three.”_

Chaeyoung gave a soft smile towards Momo before giving her a “ _happy belated birthday unnie.”_ She was met with a stare from eyes that had a bit of sadness shimmering in them before receiving a soft spoken “ _thanks kid.”_

“Since you two are new, would either of you like to share a bit about your friend and about how you’ve been holding up? You don’t have to if you don’t want to, mind you,” they both her Doctor Yoon say.

Tzuyu and Dahyun met eyes again, both looking at one another with a knowing look. The two friends turned around in their seats slightly to face one another and moved a respective fist up.

“Sure,” one of them muttered out before they engaged in a bout of rock, paper, scissors.

The first round was a wash as the two both picked scissors. They giggled at each other and the group members smiled gently at the happy sounds. The second round resulted in a victory for Tzuyu as she threw out paper in contrast to Dahyun’s rock.

“It seems like you’re up first Dahyun,” Doctor Yoon said amid his chuckles at the duo.

“It seems like it,” she responded, the smile on her face becoming a little less awkward and a little more genuine. “Sorry for the delay,” she started, a chuckle that was her own interrupting her.

“The three of us – Tzuyu, our friend Chaeyoung and I – always used a game of rock, paper, scissors to pretty much decide everything. The first round typically ended in a tie. Chaeyoung would always, always start with scissors so we’d pick it so she wouldn’t be out at the first round. She chuckled once before she continued.

“I had met Tzuyu and Chaeyoung when I was nine years old and they were eight. Back when Tzuyu was the shortest one between us and Chaeyoung was the bravest of us all. She had shoved some kid over who had knocked my lunch to the ground. She had a tiny as ever Tzuyu trailing behind her telling him to be a nicer person and the three of us had been best friends ever since.”

Dahyun paused for a moment to grab one of Tzuyu’s hands. She pulled the limb into her lap and looked down as she fiddled with the hand between her own.

(Tzuyu’s arm dangled in the space above Chaeyoung’s legs).

“Chaeyoung died in a car accident back in September. She was out with her sisters to celebrate the eldest one’s birthday. I had never asked for the details but, I know that at some point she was ejected from the vehicle. It was a very bad accident. Both of her sisters had- have significant injuries because of it. Since then, it’s been difficult to the point that it’s overwhelming.”

“What’s been overwhelming for you,” Doctor Yoon asked, goading her to continue speaking.

“Everything. Dealing with the mourning. It’s difficult waking up every day with the knowledge that someone I spent more than half of my life with is no longer around. It’s also hard dealing with her family since then too. Tzuyu and I have been playing peacemaker with her sisters because one blames the other for the accident. And to be honest, I blamed her for a while too,” Dahyun answered in full.

“How come?”

Dahyun shrugged at the inquiry, eyes finally moving around the room.

“It was easier. It was easier to blame someone than to acknowledge that it was truly just an accident where no one was really at fault. You see the impact, you see the scars, the pain, the loss and it’s like admitting that it was fate if there’s no one to blame. That removes the idea that it could have been prevented you know? That she could have still been here if someone had intervened. It takes that away from you.”

Dahyun squeezed the hand in her own as she gave out a shaky exhale – Tzuyu squeezed her hand in return.

“Dahyun can you do me a favor and you too Tzuyu,” Doctor Yoon started, waiting until both women focused on him.

“Focus on yourselves first before you cater to her sisters. You can’t, and nor should you, attempt to keep someone else together before you do so with yourself. It becomes overwhelming as you said so earlier. You can be present but don’t be afraid to pull back if it’s too much for you. Be there as much as you can without any expense to yourself.”

“That sounds easier said than done,” Tzuyu remarked.

“It always is,” was what she received in response.

Doctor Yoon clapped his hands together before addressing just one this time, “do you have anything you want to share Tzuyu?”

“I do,” she answered before pulling Dahyun’s hand into her own lap.

“Chaeyoung and I had met Dahyun unnie when we were eight but I had met Chaeyoung when I was five. My family and I had moved from Taiwan and we lived down the street from her and her family. I met her a few days after we had moved in when one of her sisters almost ran into me on her skateboard,” Tzuyu began, pausing to smile fondly at the memory.

“The first thing that I heard her say was an annoyed sounding ‘watch where you’re going you giant, she’s little.’ She waddled over to me with missing front teeth and pinched my cheeks proclaiming that we were now best friends and that she would look out for me since I was so small. Very ironic now, considering how I had eleven centimeters on her by the time we reached fifteen.”

Tzuyu met eyes with Jihyo and the woman holding her hand – who she learned was called Sana – as they both gave her an encouraging smile. She turned her attention to Dahyun, squeezing her hand as she did so and kept her eyes on her as she spoke.

“Chaeyoung and I… She and I were dating,” she started. She winced a little at Dahyun’s grip getting a little tighter and eyes widening a little more than slightly. She mouthed that she was sorry before she continued speaking.

“We were actually supposed to go on our fourth date on the weekend that she passed. She was my best friend first before she was anything else, before romantic feelings were ever involved. But, I lost two people in one that day. And it, it just sucks. But, I’m dealing with it as best as I can because I know that I need to. It’s just hard,” she finished.

Chaeyoung zoned out on the remainder of the conversation, not paying attention to what the psychologist said to Tzuyu.

She sat up from her leaning position and moved to sit cross legged. She placed her elbows on top of her thighs and put her head in her hands.

She remembered that that date was when she was going to ask Tzuyu to be her girlfriend. It dawned on her that there was just so much that she would never get to do and it made her sad to think about.

Her thoughts were interrupted before they had the chance to spiral by Momo putting a hand atop of her head.

(She had missed the older woman moving to sit in front of her Dahyun’s arms separating them briefly before said woman pulled away from Tzuyu).

 _“You okay,”_ she heard her ask. The hand on her head scratched her scalp lightly and she closed her eyes at the sensation.

She didn’t answer her and the two just sat in silence. Chaeyoung could hear Sana discussing what they did for Momo’s birthday with Jihyo humming in lieu of answer during certain parts.

She had turned her attention to both of her friends who were no longer holding hands. A contemplative look had taken residence on Dahyun’s face while Tzuyu’s held a nervous one.

She then turned to look up at Momo who was watching her carefully and with kind eyes before she finally answered the older woman’s question.

“ _I’m okay, I guess. A little sad – or a lot. But, I’m okay.”_

Momo nodded at her answer and moved to sit next to Chaeyoung on her right, abandoning her prior seat in favor of keeping the smaller woman company.

The duo sat quietly as they observed the remainder of the session. They watched as people told stories of grief, loss and ailment. Stories of people repairing their hearts and healing old scars.

There was a moment where Momo shared a frown with her sister when Jihyo gave Doctor Yoon a careless shrug when he asked her if she had anything that she wanted to share.

(In the months that Sana and Jihyo had gone to these meetings, not once had Jihyo shared anything. Not even a simple answer to how her day was going. She was mainly a quiet presence in the room).

Other than that, the night was easy and soon enough the room began to pack up. Chaeyoung placed a hand onto Momo’s shoulder, pulling the woman’s attention to her – who was in the process of standing herself.

 _“Thank you, by the way,”_ she stated.

She watched as a confused look washed over Momo’s face: “What for?”

“For everything you’ve done for me. You’ve been keeping me company and helping me adjust with everything. Also for what you did for Jeongyeon – for someone that you didn’t know. So, thank you. You’re a good person and I’m sure you were an even better one when you were alive,” she replied.

Chaeyoung was met by a heartwarming smile that came from Momo, her own disarming smile beaming in response. She watched as a suddenly bashful Momo stood up from her spot on the floor.

“Thank you for the kind words, it’s been a pleasure really. Will I see you tomorrow in our usual spot,” Momo inquired as she began to walk towards Sana and Jihyo at the door.

“You will, so rest well unnie,” Chaeyoung said in response as Momo started leaving the room. The older woman turned around to wave at her before she was completely out of sight.

Chaeyoung then turned her attention towards her two best friends. Dahyun was reassuring Tzuyu that she wasn’t mad about not being told about them nor was she put off by Tzuyu essentially coming out to her and a room full of people.

(Dahyun did, however, apologize for making it seem as if their impending relationship and sexualities were something that they needed to hide from her. Tzuyu, of course, adamantly denying that it was anything that Dahyun did that made them keep it to themselves – it was all about timing more than anything).

Dahyun then pulled the taller woman into her arms for a hug, rocking the two of them from side to side playfully. Words of encouragement laced in proudness escaped her lips and burrowed themselves into Tzuyu’s skin.

Chaeyoung smiled at them and figured that: if all roads led to here, to the people she cared about finding solace in one another, then maybe fate wasn’t so bad even if it was she who did not find happiness. Nor was it she who got to live.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Someone asked about how I came up with their personalities in terms of grieving in my curious cat but since the lot of you don’t know me on twitter, I figured I could answer here. Simply put they react the same but to different degrees. Everyone grieves differently but it’s inherently the same. Also super long so you don’t have to read it lol. But I hope you enjoyed this chapter, see you next time.
> 
> Jeongyeon and Sana (who meet next chapter btw) relate by the fact that they hold the blame for their respective sibling’s death. Jeongyeon is much more destructive with her feelings of guilt as oppose to Sana who finds peace except for when she’s asleep. It is a little to do with the fact that the deaths have a significant distance between them – four months as opposed to four weeks – so Sana is obviously adjusted more even though she, Mina and Jihyo are still dealing with many firsts without Momo. It is also due to the fact that Sana’s **hand** in Momo’s death is almost non-existent as opposed to Jeongyeon with Chaeyoung’s who could have some liability (and you’ll later learn that Nayeon has some as well).
> 
> Jihyo and Tzuyu relate in the sense that they’re the pillars of their respective grieving circles. The ones to keep everyone together and to make sure that they are always comforted. However, Tzuyu is much more self-aware than Jihyo is. She’s aware that she needs to heal as much Nayeon, Jeongyeon and Dahyun and that she can’t just brush it all away in hopes that it will go away. Jihyo doesn’t think that her pain matters all that much, so she keeps it to herself (she will have her breakdown in three-ish chapters). That is because while Tzuyu and Dahyun have known YeonYeonYoung since they were all kids, Jihyo is a fairly recent introduction into MiSaMo’s life having met them three years prior. It is also because Tzuyu and co. are tightly knit but Jihyo and Sana often had worries over their place in Momo’s life regardless of Sana being her sister and Jihyo being Momo’s first friend in Korea (I’ll show that in later chapters also, but you can see Momo’s attachment to Mina more so than you can for the others).
> 
> Nayeon, Dahyun and Mina are similar by the way that they play the blame game with the respective liable party. They need someone to blame and they choose wrongly. Nayeon, of course, being the extreme one of the bunch. Her blame is irrational but she doesn’t think that it is because someone has to suffer worse than her for Chaeyoung’s death (she does eventually learn that if Jeongyeon is to blame than so is she but that won’t be until nearly the end and the consequences of everything won’t ever really touch her). Dahyun’s blame is irrational and she like Nayeon is not aware but she knows nothing would be gained from hurting Jeongyeon and it is simply not in her personality. It also helps that she could see the consequences of Nayeon’s blame up close and personal, i.e. chapter three. Mina’s will be explained in about five chapters when she meets Nayeon, but for the sake of discourse: her blaming Sana is basically a fleeting thought. It lasted maybe up until the funeral, if that, because she was aware that it was irrational. It did no good to blame her. She benefitted in no way, so she just simply let it go.
> 
> Momo and Chaeyoung are slightly similar as ghosts the difference is you see what Momo went through, through Chaeyoung but Chaeyoung has the advantage of learning with Momo’s help as opposed to Momo who met her own mentor in her first week without the mentoring part. A parallel is the fact that Chaeyoung as a freshly dead person still addresses aspects of herself in present tense versus Momo who does so in past, i.e. the discussion of age and with stuff in later chapters.


	6. Cymbals

“It’s cold right now, I miss you for life. _It’s not going away_ , I thought I’d be okay.” – Erase | Omar Apollo

**Momo and Chaeyoung | November 18, 2018**

To Momo, Sana was inconsistent. The middle sibling was one who was ruled by her emotions.

If she felt that she needed to protect someone, she’d protect them until the feeling subsided. If she felt that she needed to love someone, she’d love them until she couldn’t anymore. If she felt that she needed to give someone space, she’d give as much as she could stand.

That wasn’t a bad thing, at least to Momo it wasn’t.

The particular personality trait made her dependable. It made her the perfect person for emotional support and it made her the owner of one of the kindest of hearts out there. It made her considerate.

But, it bred inconsistency – within reason – because emotions were fickle and change as quickly as they came.

If she wanted to something, she would do it.

(She had asked Jihyo out because she just simply wanted to).

If she didn’t want to do something, she wouldn’t do it. That is, of course, unless someone – usually Momo or Jihyo, yet never Mina – made her.

(In fact, Momo once had to drag her and Mina to their own graduation. Sana was indifferent to going and Mina hated the place – Momo did too, but she was the designated responsible one sometimes – and being ranked numbers 3 and 1 respectively, didn’t matter to either girl).

If she was indifferent to a situation, to an event, she went with the flow of whoever would suggest a thing first.

(See: previous point).

So, it was no surprise to Momo to hear that Sana was inconsistent with attending her own therapy sessions.

(She was **supposed** to go three times a month, she goes only once and maybe a second time if she feels up to doing so).

When Momo sauntered into the psychiatrist’s office behind Sana, in lieu of greeting, the corporal woman was met with a “look who decided to show up to her session for the first time in a month.”

Doctor Miyauchi Haruka grinned cheekily at the eye roll she received from said woman she poked fun at.

(An old class mate of Sana’s, the interactions between the two were often friendly, borderline sisterly, in nature. The doctor had played therapist to Sana when they were in school together, it was only fitting that she’d be her actual one).

Sana meandered over to the couch that resided opposite of the psychiatrist’s desk. Plopping down with a good natured huff, she curled her legs into her seat.

Momo sat on the floor as per typical, her own legs being pulled up to her chest with her bare feet running along the carpet.

“Nice to see you too Miya-chan,” Sana said. She proceeded to chuckle at the narrowed eyes aimed at her face with the utterance of a nickname and not of a title.

Doctor Miyauchi removed herself from Sana’s sight for a moment, looking in the drawers of her desk for Sana’s file.

“What brings you here today Sana-chan,” she spoke from under her desk, tone dripping in professionalism regardless of the familial title.

“I can’t sleep,” Sana answered with mild hesitance. She bit back a small smile at her friend popping up from under her desk with slightly disheveled hair.

Miya eyed her weirdly, the mask of professionalism slipping for a moment, “what are you smiling at?”

Sana chuckled once and shook her head in place of an answer, not wanting to deter from what she was here for.

“You haven’t been able to sleep in quite a while Sana, what’s different?”

Sana shuffled a bit in her seat, buying her a bit of time before she answered.

“I was doing fine for a moment. The nightmares usually coming once to twice a week. However, for the last week, I’ve had them almost every single night. I think-,” she started, pausing for a moment to clear her throat and organize her thoughts.

Speaking in a much lower cadence, “I think it’s just because Momo’s birthday passed and the feelings just kind of bubbled up more so.”

“What kind of feelings,” the psychiatrist said, eyes focused on the files in front of her but not on the speaking woman.

(Sana, for as emotionally upfront as she was, would still shy away if too much attention was put on her in the process).

“Guilt. Sadness. Longing. It’s mainly guilt though,” Sana responded.

“You never told me what you felt guilty for,” the psychiatrist inputted, tone softening considerably.

Sana started picking at her jeans for something to do, nerves prickling her skin.

Momo leant a little bit closer towards her sister, hovering a hand near the one Sana was using to pick at the seam of her pants. She didn’t move it until the small telltale shiver flowed through the other woman and she ceased her nervous habit in response.

“I was- I was supposed to be home when Momo died. We- the three of us always went out to get dinner on Mondays because I would finish class and they would get off of work late. I would be finished around 9:30, they would be off by 10,” Sana began with shaky words that faded in and out of volume.

“This particular time, Momo wasn’t feeling too well so she went home early. She was there by 7:30. Instead of going out for dinner just the two of us, Mina and I decided to just go home. It takes me 15 minutes to get home from campus. 15. I would have been there by 9:45, 9:50 at the latest. I went to pick her up some soup because when she’s sick she forgets to eat so I wanted to make sure she had something.”

Sana sucked in a breath. Her position at one point shifted to one where she was almost curled into herself helplessly.

“I was home by 10, Momo was dead by 9:58. That’s what they had said, that she was gone by then. Two minutes. Just two minutes. That was all it took and I- I should have been there,” she finished.

She lowered her head slightly in a bow of shame, the sobs escaping her were not as muted as she had hoped.

“I could have helped,” she began to spill out. Her words were lost between grief filled breaths and her own hands trying to physically contain the sounds coming from her mouth.

“I got home and she was just lying there on the floor. I- I was too late when I could have helped,” she paused to look up at her friend, distress ever present on her face as well as Doctor Miyauchi’s.

The older woman got up from her desk, moving to take a seat next to her more than distraught friend. Gathering the hysterical woman in her arms, she held onto her as she sobbed even more with her hand running along said woman’s back.

Miya hushed her softly but not before a disjointed, “Miya, she didn’t deserve to die alone” escaped Sana’s mouth.

It was around that broken sentence uttered that Momo stood up from her place on the floor. The abruptness of her movement caused her to falter on her feet for a moment.

The forfeiture of her balance caused her to dislodge a pocket of energy that resulted in a lamp almost toppling over from its place on the end table. The slight scraping causing the two on the couch to pull apart in curiosity.

Momo felt a surge of panic lodging as a lump in her throat and she had no idea why, but she knew she needed to not be where she was.

She fazed through the door of the room and found herself in the waiting room of the office once again.

She walked to the opposite wall and found a place in a corner. She was close enough so that she could see whenever Sana left the room but she was far enough to be out of the way of others.

(Regardless of her being spiritually present, it was rather unpleasant when people fazed through you).

She sat in the corner as she had when she was in Doctor Miyauchi’s office, the only change to her position being that she tucked her head into the space between the top of her knees and her chest.

She closed her eyes tightly, phantom breathing in and out hoping to dispel whatever it was that stuck to her skin in a non-pleasant manner.

There were these images that flashed in her head that commenced when Sana started talking about the night that she had died. The images were odd, intrusive and they played in her head like a slideshow on repeat at a speed almost too hard to catch.

The images were of shapes bathed in a pale light: the first one was of a silver hoop and the second of a triangle changing form from right to scalene and back again. The occasional image of a jackal and moth found their place in the midst of the two.

She didn’t cognize what they meant but the hoop filled her with a sense of familiarity. However, it was the triangle that caused her to panic and she had no understanding as to why.

It was the exceedingly vivid sound of glass breaking in her ear that caused her to look up in an odd moment of frantic fear.

At this same time, a hand had come into contact with her shoulder and after the passing moment of fear left her, she locked eyes with someone gazing at her in concern.

Chaeyoung sat on the heels of her feet, making herself at eye level with Momo. The hand on Momo’s shoulder gave it a comforting squeeze while a thumb ran along it.

“Hey, what’s wrong,” Chaeyoung asked her, the resounding silence emanating from the older woman causing her to speak up.

She was not met with an answer as Momo searched – a few degrees shy of frantic – for what could have been the source of the glass breaking. The physical occupants of the room didn’t seem to hear what she had heard as none of them had a look to indicate so.

She once again met eyes with Chaeyoung as the younger woman had her hands framing Momo’s face with the silence of the moment marinating between the two of them.

“Hey unnie,” Chaeyoung said to her, concern exuding from her skin. She took in the frantic way in which Momo’s own eyes searched around the room, “what’s wrong?”

Momo kept her eyes locked on Chaeyoung’s for moment in an attempt to ground her thoughts, the previous fear still edging at the recesses of her mind.

“I- I don’t know,” she finally answered, albeit a little distracted and with a tone shaking. “Did you hear glass breaking?”

Chaeyoung, with a subtle head tilt, looked at her questioningly, “no. I didn’t.”

Momo moved her hands up to rest on the ones that resided on her cheeks, “Chaeyoung-ah, I think I’m losing it.”

The two’s conversation came to an end before it could even begin with the sound of a door opening.

Sana stepped out into the waiting room with a relatively peaceful look on her face – amid eyes lightly tinting red and a face that was only a little more than flushed.

Momo followed her sister’s steps with her eyes as she chatted briefly with the receptionist to schedule her next session – (that she’ll actually show up to) – and get her prescription printed.

Whatever Chaeyoung was going to say to the older woman was lost in the wind as they were once more interrupted, this time by a name being called into the room that Sana left from: “Son Jeongyeon?”

Momo patted the hands under her own to garner the younger woman’s attention. Eyes locating the other pair for a third time – this time with neutral looks devoid almost entirely of their previous emotions.

“I believe that’s our cue to skedaddle,” Momo spoke, removing her hands from Chaeyoung’s. “I’ll tell you what happened next time I see you. Deal?”

Chaeyoung removed both of her hands from the woman’s cheeks. She paused for a second to tug gently at the aforementioned woman’s right ear, “deal.”

She helped the seated woman up with a hand before pulling her into a quick hug, Momo ruffling her hair – per typical – when they pulled apart. Chaeyoung only grunted to show her distaste before walking towards the closed door that her sister went behind.

“I’ll see you soon unnie,” Chaeyoung said before she materialized behind the door to Doctor Miyauchi’s office.

Walking into the office, she spotted Jeongyeon sitting on the couch across from her psychiatrist.

Her sister sat in her seat, position ramrod straight. She shifted her legs in various crossed positions –shifting between crossing her ankles and crossing her legs. On top of that, she would hardly make eye contact with the woman at her desk.

It was Jeongyeon’s very first session and Chaeyoung could tell that she was extremely nervous – so much so that Chaeyoung doubted that she could even get near her without freaking her out further.

She walked into the room fully, choosing to sit on the space of the floor in between Jeongyeon and her psychiatrist – (Chaeyoung looking over to note her name as Doctor Miyauchi). Mainly facing her sister – although she could still see the psychiatrist with her sideways position – she sat slouched forward, hands resting on the space of floor between her legs.

“Hello Jeongyeon,” Doctor Miyauchi spoke out. Her tone was a lot warmer than Chaeyoung had expected it to be.

Jeongyeon raised her head momentarily – from the bowed position she had found herself in – with a shy “hi” escaping her mouth.

The doctor looked at the younger woman with a soft look, “are you okay to talk” she asked in wonderment.

Jeongyeon finally met eyes with the other woman because of the remark, “what do you mean?”

Keeping her patient’s focus, she answered the inquiry, “I mean are you up for talking? You’re shifting a lot in nerves and you seem to be uncomfortable. That and the fact that you didn’t make eye contact with me for five minutes and are seemingly only doing so now out of respect, regardless of the difficulty you’re having in doing so.”

Doctor Miyauchi chuckled in a borderline fond way at the slight widening of Jeongyeon’s eyes. “I apologize for the psychoanalysis, it’s sometimes hard to shut off. The point is, you are free to not talk here until you feel like doing so – if you ever do.”

Jeongyeon looked at her in puzzlement before asking her own question, “are you supposed to tell me that? Like, isn’t that your job to make me talk?”

“It is and it isn’t,” the psychiatrist began, she bent under her desk for a moment to pull out a seemingly blank file.

“It’s my job to make sure you’re comfortable enough to talk. It’s my job to make sure that when you do talk, there is someone listening to you always. It’s my job to make sure you know there’s someone always in your backing corner. It’s not my job to make you do anything you don’t want to. Safe space and what not.”

Jeongyeon giggled for a moment, a sound that made Chaeyoung beam in her direction having not heard it in a long while.

Doctor Miyauchi smiled at Jeongyeon and Chaeyoung thought that she could like her. “What? Was my speech not convincing?”

“It was, it was,” Jeongyeon said, small smile in place. “The ending just changed the tone abruptly.”

“Fair, I get that quite often actually. But in all seriousness, take your time. It’s your first session and I don’t need to know your whole story right away. Your pace, okay?”

“Okay,” and with her reply, Jeongyeon allowed herself to slouch in her seat somewhat and uncrossed her legs. She took a moment to gather her thoughts.

Chaeyoung took that same moment to think over her last few days. She’s found a sort of solitude in reflecting, it was something that Momo told her she did a lot.

Speaking of said spirit, she wondered what was bothering her. She had never seen the other woman looking as rattled as she had since they had met somewhere around a month ago. Even when the older woman was fading due to exhaustion, confused and forgetful, she didn’t seem nearly as disturbed as she had earlier.

She hoped she was doing okay and as selfish as it sounded, she hoped it was something exclusively about her and nothing that occurred for being a lingering presence for as long as she had.

(Hoping that it was not an experience that she would ultimately deal with).

Momo had been a lingering spirit for about five months now, if Chaeyoung did the math right.

That was a long time to be in a place that you exist in every way but in actuality. That was a long time to exist without any clue as to why. That was a long time to exist without ever knowing how you died in the first place.

With at least the knowledge of how she died, Chaeyoung already had more of an understanding than Momo did regardless of the amount of time that she was “alive” in comparison.

She’s been around for not even two months and it, to be frank, sucked. She was in all honestly excited to go into the light or whatever clichéd “passing on” motif that would get her out of here.

Watching your family fall apart and your friends try to keep themselves together was not her definition of a good time. Watching them fall apart over you being gone when you were right there was horrible.

It was some weird form of hell she found herself in and she didn’t know why she was here to begin with.

She groaned in dissatisfaction and a mild form of distress, before listening in on the voices of the background, a very confused sounding Jeongyeon taking the lead of the two.

“How do you get through grief,” Jeongyeon asked in a voice unstable and unsure.

Doctor Miyauchi considered the question for a moment, fiddling with the dog ears in a nearby file. “It depends on a lot of factors. How long was the event that inspired said grief?”

It was an open ended question and the psychiatrist seemingly had more to input but Jeongyeon answered anyway, “almost two months.”

Doctor Miyauchi nodded before asking her next question, coupling her hands together in front of her. “Were you close to the person that was involved?”

“It was my baby sister.”

“Do you want to get over your grief?”

“Sometimes.”

“Do you think you deserve to?”

“No,” and at that Jeongyeon paused. She shook her head vehemently before repeating herself, “no, I don’t think I deserve to feel anything other than despair about it.”

The psychiatrist leant forward on her desk a little bit, a knowing look framing her eyes. “Why don’t you think so?”

“Because I was driving the car,” Jeongyeon began, her tone fluctuating as she spoke.

“I was driving the car when it jumped the barrier because I was trying to avoid going head first with a truck on the wrong side of the road. My little sister died because of it. She was twenty, just started university, the best little sister that anyone could have ever had and she’s just gone.”

Her hands shook as she spoke, trembling in a mixture of emotions.

“My older sister is paralyzed from the belly button down – temporarily or not – because of it. She likes being active, she ran every morning. She can’t even sit up without the help of a support brace that she can only wear for twenty minutes because it’ll hurt her otherwise.”

She moved a hand up to wipe at her face, being mindful of the stiches adorning her skin.

“I got this glaring scar that takes up a quarter of my face because of it. I have to wear special glasses sometimes because I can’t always see out of my eye. All of that happened, all of that pain and loss happened because of me,” she finished.

The emotion in her voice alternated between spilling too much and not spilling enough.

“Jeongyeon, that’s a lot of responsibility to take on,” Doctor Miyauchi responded in a pillow soft tone.

Jeongyeon shrugged, “responsibility is all I know. That was my job, to look after them even if I was the middle child. Nayeon is an amazing older sister but she’s flaky sometimes and has a carefree attitude that rivaled Chaeyoung’s. Our parents told me, before we got in that car, to drive safely and I completely messed that up.”

“Do you know what you said to me a few moments ago when you started speaking,” the psychiatrist asked. When she was met with a watery pair of confused eyes she elaborated further.

“You said that you were trying to avoid going head first with a truck that was on the wrong side of the road. There is another actor involved with that accident that is not just you or your sisters. There was a driver on the wrong side of the road and none of what happened would have happened if that driver was not an active participant.

Simply put Jeongyeon, it was not your fault. You did what you could do in that situation. Some part of your subconscious identifies with that because one of the first things out of your mouth was showing that. Guilt will bring you to your knees if you let it. And so far, it hasn’t. You’re here and you’re talking to me candidly about it. You deserve to move forward. You’re doing well – today, yesterday, the next day – you’re doing well Jeongyeon,” she finished.

The psychiatrist gave a soft barely there smile at the sobs coming from her patient, the other woman sounding fairly relieved. And yeah, Chaeyoung decided that she did quite like her.

\---0---

It had been a rough couple of hours for the two of them, Jeongyeon more so than her, but Chaeyoung was glad have some form of solace in a fairly desolate diner down the street from the psychiatry building.

(Plus, having to tune out too many sets of voices would cause her to expel too much energy that she didn’t really have to spare today).

She sat at the table to the right of her sister – (she figured she wouldn’t get away with pulling out the chair across from her without creeping her out).

She watched as the older woman absentmindedly pulled at the pieces of her sandwich, occasionally stuffing a piece into her mouth. There was an abandoned cup of coffee resting next to her plate – her appetite was seemingly gone.

A body sitting in the chair directly across from her, startled Chaeyoung. Removing her attention from her sister, she came face to face with Momo. “Unnie?”

“Hey kiddo,” was the reply that she was met with and the sight of a mischievous smile. “Did I startle you,” Momo asked, words surrounded by a chuckle.

Chaeyoung huffed in displeasure, a “just a little” escaping her mouth begrudgingly.

Momo only laughed a little harder at that with an insincere “I’m sorry” leaving her. The laughing woman feigned wiping a tear from under her eye.

Chaeyoung rolled her eyes in playful annoyance of the movement but the action did raise a question in her head. “Hey, wait. Unnie, didn’t you have glasses on the first time that we met?

Momo paused for a moment in curiosity. She touched the space beneath her eyes again and felt nothing but skin. “Huh, I guess I lost them when I had transported from the roof. I honestly hadn’t noticed.” She chuckled once before finishing, “well, something good came out of me dying. Good eyesight.”

Their conversation was once again interrupted by someone sitting in the chair across from Jeongyeon which startled said woman from her revere – and by extension Chaeyoung, yet Momo remained unflinching.

The woman now seated across from her held two cups in her hands – occasionally tapping her fingers on it, so Chaeyoung assumed that they were hot – coupled with an apologetic smile.

“Hi, I apologize for startling you and for how weird this may seem to you. I uh, you didn’t look like you were having a good day so I figured that you could use a bit of kindness today,” the unnamed woman began.

She extended one of the cups in her hands towards Jeongyeon, giving her a sheepish smile as she did. Jeongyeon gave her a curious look in response, not yet taking the cup being given to her.

“I got you a cup of coffee, a flat white with two sugars I think I heard you say earlier. I presumed you needed a fresh cup,” she finished, smile never diminishing from her face. She jiggled the cup in enticement before relinquishing it as Jeongyeon finally reached for it.

“I’m not going to lie, that’s a little creepy,” Jeongyeon said, tittering at the manner in which the woman’s eyes dropped and her face flushed in obvious embarrassment. “But, your eyes look kind so, thank you.”

She took a sip of the drink that now occupied her hand, giving a smile in appreciation. “I’m Jeongyeon, by the way.” She extended her free hand out, waiting for the woman opposite of her to introduce herself.

The woman reached for the hand and took it in her grasp, “I’m Sana.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay, studying for my master's exam surprisingly takes up all of my time. The next chapter will probably be just as delayed so I apologize for that too. But, I hope you enjoyed this. This was one of my favorite's to write. **Also: I rewrote the last two chapters. They have like an additional thousand words almost but they're essentially the same, just new and improved dialogue**


	7. Numb

“ _Body of mine finally went numb_. And I’m finally done, all I feel is numb.” – Numb | Sabrina Claudio

**Chaeyoung | November 24, 2018**

She was accustomed to the biting chill of the room; the silence that wedged within the cracks of the walls and stuck to any tangible surface. But it didn’t make it any easier.

And if it wasn’t easy for her to withstand, it certainly couldn’t have been easy for the physical occupants of the room – even if they were the ones causing the room to feel like a stifled box.

She turned to the eldest occupant of the room, catching sight of restless limbs moving in jerky movements.

Nayeon’s jittery hands fluttered along the blanket that covered her legs. Fingers toying with the various and ragged strands of strings that adorned the item as decoration or other.

Chaeyoung followed a finger twirling one of said strands around before loosening it from the grips of her fingers. It was eventually pulled towards the anxious woman’s chest in an unraveling fashion.

Dropping the string from her hand, Nayeon started tugging at the blanket as a whole. She slowly pulled it off of her legs and then covered them once more before repeating the process for what Chaeyoung knew would be a few more times.

The stoic woman located to her right observed her carefully, a hint of concern and curiosity danced across her sight. But still, she didn’t bother to say anything to the clearly agitated person.

Nayeon huffed in mild irritation at her once again uncovered limbs. She pushed forward slightly with a bit of aggression that caused her to wince lightly but soundlessly. She began to messily move her legs that would remain unmoving otherwise.

She rolled the left one from side to side to the best of her ability, scoffing lowly in disgust at the lack of weight that made up the once fairly toned limb and the many scars that littered the surface.

She turned her attention to her right leg, flicking at it and making an indistinguishable sound in the back of her throat when she still couldn’t feel the sensation of doing so.

The agitation that she felt only increased before she pulled the same leg that she was prodding at up off of the bed. She spoke out a “you useless fucking limbs” in between slowly clinching teeth before a voice interrupted her (weekly occurring) impending meltdown.

“Nayeon,” the attempt at being stern voice rung out.

The namesake dropped her leg back to the bed, moving to fit the blanket back around them – which was admittedly pointless considering the time.

She slid backwards a touch after she was satisfied with the arrangement of her legs, leaning against the several propped up pillows. A sigh left her mouth before she spoke in a tone wrapped in exhaustion, “I know I’m not your favorite person these days Tzuyu-ah, but I’m still your unnie.”

Tzuyu answered the retort with a much softer tone than previously used, “Nayeon-unnie.”

Said woman met the younger woman’s eyes for a brief moment, pain flickering within both irises but neither acknowledging it. A whispered out “thank you,” went unacknowledged as well.

The room was silent once again and Chaeyoung only sighed carelessly, shoulders coming up for in an exasperated shrug at the forthcoming quiet.

It was a constant of the room, the quiet that is. Where the permanent occupant of the room and her temporary counterpart often resigned themselves to residing in silence ever since Nayeon’s outburst that drove Jeongyeon – and admittedly Dahyun – from the room.

(The former woman actually stopped by within the early hours of the morning on the days that she had therapy, unbeknownst to her older sister).

Chaeyoung was frankly tired of the stillness that surrounded only Nayeon’s presence within – but not limited to – their group. The silence only ever cracked with flares of angers from said woman.

The fissures of her silent disposition only occurred on the days in which she would have her wellness check.

(Occurring twice a week, the checks were in addition to her daily physio stretches. The checks would determine the motor functions of her legs and the extent of both the damage and repair of the nerves that existed from her belly button to her toes).

Those checks were on days like today and usually threw Nayeon into an irritable and anxious state before she was even checked over.

Both Chaeyoung and Nayeon perked up at the sound of Tzuyu getting up from the chair she was sitting in – simultaneously tilting their respective heads to the side in question.

“Where-,” Nayeon began, but was caught off by Tzuyu’s already prepared answer.

“I’ll see you shortly. I have to check on something, but I’ll be back in an hour or two,” the younger woman answered, making her way toward the door. She didn’t spare the woman on the bed a glance as her hand met the knob of the door.

Nayeon narrowed her eyes for a moment, before resigning herself to the dismissive treatment. It wasn’t new to her after all. She just watched as the other woman left and didn’t say anything when she did.

The door opened once more, catching the remaining occupants’ attention. Nayeon had small hopes that it was Tzuyu coming back but the hope fizzled away with the appearance of her doctor and physical therapist walking into the room.

She was approached by her doctor and his soft smile of encouragement first. Doctor Matthew Kim was the second youngest of the doctors that she’s met since she was admitted to the hospital. He was also the one that worked with her the most out of the group of six.

“Hi Nayeon-ssi,” the doctor spoke out, an inflatable cuff within the grip of his left hand. “What’s your number for today,” he asked, gesturing for her to hold her an arm out.

“Today’s a six,” Nayeon began as he wrapped the blood pressure cuff around her arm. “The pressure at the base of my back isn’t as tight today but it still hurts if I move too aggressively,” she finished.

Her voice was more than a little on the mechanical side, as per typical of it whenever she’s asked about her injury. She eyed the doctor as he wrote her blood pressure on the dry erase board across from her, the 130/85 replacing the 140/90 from the last week.

She narrowed her eyes at the numbers before asking the room if that was a good range.

“It is. It’s still on the high side, but it’s at least within the range of normal. You’ve begun to settle into your new prescription it seems, which is good,” was the answer she received and she gave a small smile at the progress.

Unknowingly to the room, Chaeyoung gave out a sigh of relief. She was more than aware of the issues that stemmed from her last prescription – more so than any of their family or friends.

(Competing with two other prescriptions, her pain meds caused her blood pressure to spike to dangerous levels to the point that she was at risk of falling into a coma or suffering a seizure).

She, much like Nayeon, was very relieved that they promptly switched it.

The other occupant of the room made her presence known with a question laced in confusion, “wait, Nayeon? Did you say that your back hurts if you move too aggressively?”

The question caused Nayeon to grow sheepish, shooting a demure smile towards her therapist. Doctor Jeon Somin was a touch more on the serious side than Doctor Kim and regardless of her being the youngest of the bunch, she still intimidated Nayeon quite a lot.

Doctor Kim snorted a laugh at the _deer caught in the headlights_ look that Nayeon sported. The two tangible individuals cutting their respective attention to the doctor who was making sure Nayeon’s files were sorted out.

He raised his head to the duo after realizing that silence had settled around them. A knowing look crossed his features before his eyes focused in on Nayeon. He gave her an entertained smile before speaking. “Don’t stop on my account,” he said amusedly, beginning to walk towards the door.

“I’ll see you after your session Nayeon.” He paused his movement to nudge at the physical therapist when he got to her. A “stop scaring her” leaving him accompanied with a chuckle. Both sounds being lost with the closing of the door.

The two remaining occupants looked at the door for a beat longer, until Doctor Jeon put her focus back on the woman who found interest in the blanket covering her legs.

She stood there scrutinizing Nayeon for a moment – free of judgement – before soundlessly making her way over to the contemplating woman’s side.

She began delicately peeling the blanket from off of Nayeon’s legs, said woman working with her mutely. She took note of the sound of what she suspected was the woman’s teeth clinching together when the limbs were free.

She started massaging the slacked muscles with a medicine that quickly began to permeate the air of the room – moving the limb accordingly as she did.

“It bothers you a lot doesn’t it,” was what broke the silence of the room. Nayeon snapped her attention to the woman working meticulously and the therapist continued once she felt Nayeon’s gaze on her.

“You feel out of place and helpless because your body doesn’t work as it should nor as it did. And you feel a little more than useless when you need assistance with something that was once so easy and so simple,” she paused for a moment to connect eyes with Nayeon.

The eye contact was held briefly before the younger woman cut her eyes to look at the leg being manually pulled back and forth. A look of disdain flashed across her face, not escaping the watchful eye of her therapist.

“You’re angry and you’re angry in a way that you can’t particularly manage.”

Doctor Jeon seemed as though she had more to say but was interrupted by a displeased huff from her patient.

“I’m not a fan of being psychoanalyzed, specifically from people who can’t possibly understand,” Nayeon spoke. The words weren’t particularly aimed to sound mean, but there was a hardened edge to them.

The therapist didn’t answer, opting to move to Nayeon’s opposite side and begin work on her other leg.

“Here’s the thing Nayeon, I understand significantly more than most doctors here,” was the quieted response that she got.

Nayeon watched her with curiosity, defaulting back to her usual demeanor of quietness.

“I have a little sister around your age that suffers from multiple sclerosis. Her motor functions are not-,” she pauses to look up at Nayeon for a moment.

“She spends more time in a wheelchair than she does out of it. Spends more time needing assistance with things even simpler such as writing when an attack hits her. So yeah I understand, even if it’s not on a first person scale.”

Nayeon bites her lip for a moment, a look of remorse washing over her features. “I’m sorry.”

The therapist gently sat Nayeon’s leg down, covering both of them lightly with her blanket. She turned towards Nayeon, putting out a hand for her to grab and pulling her headlong when she did.

“Don’t be. Seriously. I understand and it’s because I understand on both a personal and professional level that – lean forward a bit – I get the emotions that come with it and that you’re struggling with. Those same emotions are valid, even if they’re more along the lines of the uglier shades of emotions. We call that empathy in medical school,” she finished.

She smiled briefly at the chuckle Nayeon let out.

“So, what’s the verdict?”

Nayeon twisted her body to the right for a moment before turning to her left thereafter and holding the position. Twisting to the front, she leant onward, carefully this time. “It’s a five.”

The doctor walked over to the dry erase board, writing something that neither Nayeon nor Chaeyoung could currently read. Turning around with a smile plastered on her face, she moved towards the door with a “wait here” floating over her shoulder as she reached it.

“That was a little insensitive but okay,” Nayeon said. She cracked a smile when the departing woman cut a glare towards her. The smile grew slightly more at the cackle she was sure came from Doctor Kim as he walked pass the open door.

Chaeyoung chuckled to herself with a soft smile being welcomed onto her face. She liked that Nayeon sounded a little lighter than usual – at least enough to crack a joke.

Doctor Jeon came back into the room with a delighted smile still in place. However, she didn’t move away from the door when she fully entered but instead held it open.

“Why are you so smiley,’ Nayeon asked, narrowing her eyes in suspicion.

Doctor Kim entered the room with his own beaming smile in place to which Nayeon would have questioned him as well had she not noticed what accompanied him.

“Is that,” she whispered out in a weird mixture of disbelief and muted excitement. Chaeyoung started shimmying in place with her own anticipation.

“It is,” Doctor Kim answered before Doctor Jeon interrupted him.

“You’ve made very good progress, Nayeon. You’re able to sit up for almost half of the day now with proper support and for almost two hours without it,” she said before the doctor next to her took over in his excitement.

“We figured you would appreciate a little mobility,” the excited man added. He started veering the wheelchair over to her as he spoke and reached her by the time his sentence finished.

Doctor Jeon started lowering her bed to a suitable height to transfer her into the chair. She looked up to see Nayeon eyeing the chair in both excitement and nervousness.

“Would you like to try?”

Nayeon pulled a lip in between her teeth for a brief moment before giving a small nod in agreement. Not really using her words but both doctors understood.

“Don’t be so nervous. We’re with you,” Doctor Kim said as they worked on getting her situated in her chair.

Chaeyoung watched her sister in awe as she easily sat in the chair – a worried look flashing briefly at the wince the older woman let out.

“Are you okay,” Doctor Kim questioned her when he noticed the look of discomfort that momentarily encompassed her face.

“Yeah,” she pauses for a moment to clear her throat. “Yeah, it was just uncomfortable for a second.”

Doctor Jeon nodded in agreement, hearing the complaint pretty much anytime someone is put in one for the first time. She squeezed Nayeon’s knee in awareness, as she rearranged the woman’s legs in her chair – since Nayeon halfheartedly fell into the chair.

“Okay so,” the doctor began, standing up from her squatting position. “We’re going to start by letting you stay in the chair for thirty minutes today, just so that you can get a feel for it.”

She paused, allowing for Nayeon to nod in understanding before continuing. “Now for some instructions. You push forward on both wheels to move for- don’t roll your eyes Nayeon, it’s important.”

Both Chaeyoung and Doctor Kim stifled their laughs at the impatient whine that left Nayeon and the equally petulant one from her therapist.

“Now, pull backwards on both wheels to move backwards. If you want to turn right, push the left one forward and the same goes for turning left and its inverse. Keep both wheels on the ground, no tricks in your chair. Don’t speed and slow your wheels down before you abruptly stop so it won’t jostle you too much nor hurt your hands… I can hear you grumbling under your breath, you have the patience of a toddler but it’s a good thing that I’m finished.”

Doctor Jeon lightly tossed her arms in the air, jokingly so, gesturing for Doctor Kim to take over.

“Want to go to for a spin in the garden down the hall?”

Both Doctors stared at Nayeon expectantly as she met their stare with a blank one of her own – she was very clearly trying to process.

“And this- this is real,” Nayeon asked in a shade of wonder, earning two nods a few degrees short of excited. “I can actually leave this room?”

“Yes,” Doctor Kim began only to be cut off by a “but only under direct supervision” from Doctor Jeon.

Chaeyoung chuckled at the tired look that suddenly made its way onto Doctor Kim’s face.

“Yes but, only under direct supervision,” he said, prodding the therapist out of his way and laughing when she swat his hands out of the way.

He made his way behind Nayeon, lightly resting his hands on the handles of her chair. “So have we reached a consensus on the garden or do you want to stroll in a circle around your room,” he said, laughter lacing his tone.

“The garden is,” she hesitated for a moment, “it’s fine.”

Doctor Jeon squatted down in front of Nayeon, searching for the eyes that connected to the ground. “Why are you hesitating so much,” she asked, softness flanking each individual word.

Nayeon shrugged a singular time, an unsure look crossing her face. “I just- it doesn’t feel real? I’m just so accustomed to being bed bound that I guess forgot that I was working to not be. So **this** doesn’t feel like my reality. If that- that doesn’t make sense does it?”

Doctor Jeon smiled patiently at her before remarking. “Kid, this is as real as it gets. You earned this and it’s only up from here.” She wrinkled up her nose for a moment before adding: “Yeah no, we’ll leave the optimistic pep talks to Kim.”

“It wasn’t so bad. Maybe a 6 out of 10,” Nayeon said amid a small laugh watching the therapist as she stood up.

“So, to the garden?”

Chaeyoung watched the three of them leave the room. Playful bickering from both doctors and a giggling Nayeon were the sounds the trailed them in their wake.

The remaining figure in the room crossed her legs and sat her arms on top of her thighs. Closing her eyes for a moment, she materialized into the garden.

Opening her eyes after a second, she took in her surroundings including the person in the vicinity that was not her eldest sister.

The blonde woman was wheelchair bound herself. Her chair was parked within the grassed section of the area and she seemed to be focused on something; a white butterfly that fluttered along the top of her hand. Both she and the unnamed woman smiled at that.

Chaeyoung turned her attention away from the woman and onto the entrance of the garden with the sound of the doors opening.

Doctor Kim was pushing Nayeon along the smooth bricked path – it was just the two of them – before reaching a more open zone. The doctor then pulled away from her. He waved a hand in her direction in a gesture before speaking.

“Alright, let’s see if you got a handle on how to maneuver around in that thing.”

Nayeon wordlessly looked at him for a bit before she began to skim her hands along the wheels of her chair. She pushed herself forward and pulled herself backwards a few moments later. She then turned herself in a small circle before pulling herself back in the position that she was deposited in. She looked up to Doctor Kim with a smile that settled into a mischievous one at his perplexed expression.

“Why are you good at that?”

Nayeon gave out an airy laugh before answering: “my grandma had one when I was younger and my sisters and I spent a lot of time clambering all over it when she wasn’t occupying it.”

The nostalgic and faraway look in her eyes was reflected in Chaeyoung’s own.

(Memories of various combinations of her and her sisters trying different ways to wind up in the chair after jumping from surfaces – it usually ended with said person on the ground – played behind her eyes).

She laughed at how reckless and troublesome they were as kids – not noticing that the woman who had her previous attention honed in on the sound with a frown. She turned her attention back to the two in front of her.

“Doctor Jeon would like for me to advise you to stay on the pathway,” he began, fondly rolling his eyes. “But since you seem to have it under control, feel free to move into the grass area. Either of us will come and grab you in fifteen minutes.”

Chaeyoung’s attention went back to the woman from earlier who seemed to be lost in her own thoughts. She sat some paces away from Nayeon yet seemingly obscured from her view by a couple of young evergreen trees.

She tuned in to see Doctor Kim trek towards the two glass doubled doors. His attention was averted for a moment, noticing the woman sitting off to the side. He gave her a friendly wave and a soft smile, “Hi Jiwoo.”

The woman – named Jiwoo – distractedly waved at him before giving him a just as soft smile, “hi Matty.”

The doctor rolled his eyes at the nickname for its lack of formality but fondness crinkled along the edges of his gaze anyway.

Chaeyoung turned her attention back to her sister as the opposite pair chatted for a moment. She tilted her head in confusion as to what her eldest sister was doing.

Nayeon had settled on turning herself in a small circle once again, swapping between clockwise and counterclockwise rotations. A small smile settled onto her face and it slowly increased in its size.

She settled her chair still as the smile on her face beamed brightly. She tossed her arms in the air after a moment with a happy smile in place, gleeful giggles following along.

She looked positively carefree for the first time in a very long time and if Chaeyoung was capable of doing so, she would have cried at the view.

A sharp “woo” pierces the air from the exhilarated woman, followed by more giggles – from both her and Chaeyoung.

“Okay, that’s enough of that,” the woman said to herself, laughter still lacing her words and smile still in place as she rolled onto the grass. She moved towards the open clearing with her head bouncing side to side with an invisible tune playing in her head.

She stopped in place when she noticed a figure looking at her sheepishly. Jiwoo gave her a timid wave at the stare she received from Nayeon – who had come to the realization that she was heard giggling like a maniac as clear as day.

“Uhh, hi,” the blonde woman spoke out unsurely. “I feel like I should apologize for overhearing your celebration but,” the sentence trailed off into a shrug.

“No it’s fine,” was the reply she got, tone equally unsure. Nayeon shook her head to herself for a moment before rolling a bit closer to the other woman: “I’m Nayeon.”

“I’m Jiwoo,” the other woman spoke. She eyed the approaching woman carefully and her eyes landed for a moment too long on Nayeon’s legs – noticed by both other occupants of the space – before making eye contact.

Nayeon paused in her approach, feeling the urge to push her gown over her legs a little more – a sentiment that was understood.

“I’m sorry, that was a bit rude,” Jiwoo said, guilt crossing her features.

“It’s,” Nayeon began only to cut herself off with a huff. “No, it’s fine. I’m just not very accustomed to people not related to me nor a doctor seeing my legs.”

She could see the unspoken question glistening in the other woman’s eyes and she offered her a quick to the point answer: “car accident and potentially temporary paralysis.”

Jiwoo nodded in understanding, a look of sympathy encompassed her face before she asked, “potentially temporary?”

Nayeon answered her, a bit of confusion finding place in her words: “yeah. Something about the signals from my brain to anything at my waist and lower don’t fully flow. Hip displacement and a shifted lower vertebrae doesn’t help either.”

Jiwoo flinched at the idea, whistling lowly. “That’s rough. I hope you get full mobility of your legs eventually.”

She received a small “thank you” in reply before gesturing at her own currently immobile legs. “Multiple sclerosis flare up. Currently dealing with high muscle weakness in my legs and balancing issues, hence this rolling contraption.”

Nayeon scrunched her nose up, offering Jiwoo a genuine sounding, “that sucks.”

The other woman chuckled at the comment, “yeah, it does.”

She began balancing on the tires of her chair, spinning around fast enough to look impressive but slow enough to be mindful of the grass that she was on. Nayeon watched after her in muted awe.

Settling back on the ground fully, Jiwoo gave Nayeon a goofy smile. “Although it does have its perks. This is your first time in the chair I take it,” she asked, pausing to allow for Nayeon to confirm the statement.

“I’ll teach you some cool tricks when you’re used to it a bit more.”

The duo’s – and Chaeyoung’s – respective attention was called towards the entrance of the garden as someone aggressively cleared their throat to earn it.

Jiwoo had the decency to at least look bashful as Doctor Jeon and an unknown male approached the two chatting on the lawn.

“Hey unnie,” Jiwoo said, adoration coating her tone in an attempt of aegyo. She puffed out her cheeks to increase its effectiveness, swatting a hand in Nayeon’s direction at the snort that left her mouth.

Doctor Jeon pinched the bridge of her nose in lieu of replying to the woman and acknowledging her attempt. She then pushed the chuckling male next to her in their direction before speaking to him only. “Taehyung oppa please take my sister home before she convinces my patient to grind down a railing in her wheelchair.”

Jiwoo chuckled at both the comment and the mildly shocked look on Nayeon’s face before looking up at Taehyung and accepting the kiss that he pressed against her.

“It was nice to meet you Nayeon. I definitely won’t try to teach you any cool tricks the next time our paths cross,” she said, sending a poorly crafted wink in her direction.

Nayeon laughed at the remark before sending an “it was nice to meet you as well” her way as she, and who Nayeon assumed was her boyfriend, retreated towards the door.

Before she got too far, however, Jiwoo turned her attention towards Chaeyoung and raised an eyebrow at her. She gave the “who should not be seen woman” a subtle wave before continuing to leave the area.

Chaeyoung blinked after her, astonished where she sat. Her body tensed up at being so openly acknowledged by someone who was very clearly still alive. Exclamation points and question marks danced through her head as she tried to understand the implications of what occurred.

(It was weird to consider the idea that there were people who could openly view ghosts. Although, it never seemed weird to her that she was in fact a ghost – odd but not weird).

By the time she landed on the solution to just simply ask Momo, she was the only remaining entity in the garden.

She entangled her legs much like she did earlier and closed her eyes, waiting to materialize into Nayeon’s room.

It took a bit longer for her to get where she needed to be as she was more than distracted. She opened her eyes once she felt the air change dissipate around her – and when she did open them, she was met by the unusual sight of a panicked stricken Tzuyu sans Nayeon.

She watched as the younger woman strode back and forth between the door to the room and Nayeon’s bed, muttering unidentifiable words under her breath all the while. The look of worry was palpable on her facial features and were similar to Chaeyoung’s own.

Her frantic back and forth movements didn’t cease until the previously mentioned door was opened.

Nayeon entered the room coupled with Doctor Jeon, who was pushing her chair through the threshold. The older woman was too preoccupied with massaging her aching arms to notice her not quite unexpected visitor. Doctor Jeon, on the other hand, was not.

“Hi Tzuyu-ssi,” she cheerfully spoke out, causing the seated woman to snap her attention to. The previously cheerful woman’s face contorted into one of blankness as she locked eyes with the younger woman. She took note of the panic slowly seeping out of her eyes and making way for poorly concealed confusion.

Nayeon took the reins of her wheelchair, rolling herself out from under Doctor Jeon’s grasp – grunting at the slight burn of her limbs, but ignoring it in full.

Doctor Jeon picked up on the tension (it wasn’t easy to ignore in any rate anyway) and soundlessly helped Nayeon back into her bed.

She moved to put the blanket over the younger woman’s legs but Tzuyu had beaten her to it. She nodded to the younger woman and walked over to the board in Nayeon’s room. “What’s your number?"

Nayeon gnawed on her bottom lip for a moment before giving out an answer, “not including my arms, it’s an eight. The seat isn’t entirely uncomfortable after a while but it’s not comfortable either. And the bumps on the way to and from the garden, certainly didn’t help.”

The Doctor scribbled down the information reiterated to her before turning her attention back onto the seated woman. “Okay. With that in mind, we’ll try again on Friday if you’re feeling up to it and if not, there’s always the next day. Sound good?”

Nayeon nodded her agreement and watched as the therapist made her way towards the exit of the room, grabbing her wheelchair along the way. She threw a “don’t forget to take your medicine for today” over her shoulder as she left the room.

For quite a long moment, the remaining three occupants of the room remained in silence aside from the rustling of the corporal bodies as they shifted around.

Nayeon slid her body down her bed a touch more, not quite laying down but close enough. She raised her gaze to the ceiling and listened to Tzuyu finally move to sit into her usual chair. She peered over to the younger woman after a beat and could see her with her head in her hands.

Expelling a deep breath from her mouth, she bit the metaphorical bullet and asked her what was wrong.

Tzuyu’s answer came muffled by the hands covering her face and Nayeon rolled her eyes at that (but, she waited her out in silence because it was an act that younger woman often then when she was stressed).

Subsequently, Tzuyu removed her head from her hands and proceeded to unceremoniously slouch into her chair.

“Nothing is wrong per se, I was just worried because I couldn’t find you when I came back into the room,” she admitted.

Nayeon sucked in a breath that sounded strained, “why?”

Tzuyu gave an uncharacteristic shrug before answering the pensive eyes that were on her. “I didn’t expect you to not be where I left you so it made me nervous and I immediately jumped to the worst case scenario. I was worried.”

Nayeon sounded exhausted when she asked “why” for a second time.

Tzuyu tilted her head to the side, “why what Nayeon-unnie?”

“Why does that matter to you if I was still here,” she asks, the self-deprecation is palpable in her tone and straining her words.

Chaeyoung stilled at both her sister’s tone and the words that she said because god, she didn’t expect to hear the same thoughts that Jeongyeon shares with herself in her eldest sister.

Tzuyu takes in a sharp breath for that same reason, but there is no hesitation in her answer no matter how shaky it comes across, “because you matter to me.”

And Nayeon has the audacity to laugh at the remark. She begins pulling herself into a more seated position, carelessly so.

Tzuyu shoots up at the haphazard movements the second a grimace crosses Nayeon’s features.

At her side in an instant, she grabs the arm that began to fail in holding up Nayeon’s body weight much to the woman’s utter annoyance. She gently maneuvers her into the position that she wanted all the while dealing with loud protests from the older woman.

She doesn’t let go when she’s finished, but she does move a touch closer so that they are almost nose to nose.

Nayeon attempts to back away from the fire that she can see swimming in Tzuyu’s eyes, but the grip on her arm doesn’t allow her to: “You can let me go now Tzuyu.”

Tzuyu doesn’t and anger floods her tone when she asks her to let go for a second time. She doesn’t let go and Nayeon attempts to tug her arm free from her grasp – to no avail. “Tzuyu, let go. That hurts.”

It didn’t but she hoped Tzuyu would buy that.

“I’m not letting go so, stop asking,” was the response that she received from the younger woman.

(She did, however, loosen the grip that she had on her arm – regardless of the fact that she didn’t actually believe that she hurt her).

“Why did you laugh unnie? What did you find so funny with what I said,” the younger woman asked. Her tone was the same feathery soft one that she used but coupled with a thinly contained temper following in its wake, it sounded hardened.

“I don’t matter to you,” Nayeon said, making eye contact with Tzuyu at the statement.

“You do.” “I don’t.”

A breath of frustration left Tzuyu before she reeled the feeling back in. “You do, stop disputing with me and saying that you don’t. You do. I’m just mad,” Tzuyu began.

A flicker of vulnerability incased Nayeon’s face before it was gone in that same instance, “at me?”

Tzuyu blinked in understanding before giving her an answer she could cognize, “yes, at you. I’m mad with how you talked to Jeongyeon-unnie the last time you saw her.”

She recognized the dangerous glint in her eyes that arose whenever the name was said.

She tugged on the arm in her grasp – softly so and pleadingly, “stop that. You were about to insult her, I saw it in your eyes.”

“I didn’t do anything,” Nayeon began only to be interrupted immediately afterwards.

“That’s the problem, you don’t think you’ve done anything wrong. You’ve justified treating her like crap when it’s not justified at all. And you **know** that. Somewhere in that bullheaded cranium of yours, you know that.”

Nayeon scoffs in disagreement and Tzuyu drops her arm in frustration. She stalks off towards the chair she was previously sitting in and Nayeon panics.

“Don’t,” the older woman begins, closing her eyes tightly. “Don’t leave. Please,” and the words are jagged. But Tzuyu sits in the chair instead of doing what she originally planned to do.

“I’m tired unnie,” Tzuyu said, sounding utterly defeated.

Nayeon wipes at her face harshly so and sniffles once before addressing Tzuyu. “I’m tired too. I don’t- I don’t know how to not be angry at her. In my head, it feels right; like I’m supposed to be.”

Pausing to rub tiredly at her face, she continues. “I’m sorry,” she raises a palm to Tzuyu knowing that the woman had something to say. “I’m not apologizing for how I treat her because we both know it wouldn’t be genuine. I do apologize for putting you and Dahyun in between us.”

Tzuyu doesn’t look entirely satisfied with what she’s saying so she tacks on, “I will try harder.”

Tzuyu exhales and throws her arms in the air for a moment before dropping them to her lap. “I guess that’s the best that we can do for today.” She looks at Nayeon in a mixture of irritated fondness and Chaeyoung isn’t sure how she managed to encompass both emotions.

“This conversation is definitely not over though, unnie,” she adds on.

Nayeon waves her hand dismissively before settling further into her pillows with her right arm cascading over her eyes, “I’m sure it isn’t kid.”

Chaeyoung grunts at how the two settled into a lighter air than they’ve resided in for the last couple of weeks. She was definitely not okay with the conversation being left as is and she complains about it under her breath as she made her way to the crook of the room.

She settles on the floor before pressing herself against the wall. She rubs her eyes once before fluttering her eyes close for a much needed nap.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Long time no see. I changed the titles of the chapters so in the event you get 89494 notifications, that's why.


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